Pearson Inc

http://www.wired.com/2016/04/apec-schools/

woke math 5/22

fldoe-releases-math-textbook-reviews-00030503

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida’s Department of Education on Thursday released scores of documents shedding new light on why the agency rejected dozens of proposed math textbooks over what state leaders deemed “impermissible” content, including lessons on critical race theory.

The records, nearly 6,000 pages of book examinations, show that state reviewers flagged several traces of critical race theory and inklings of “social emotional learning” in proposed texts, two topics that have been explicitly targeted by the DeSantis administration. The slate of textbook denials gained national attention last month when state leaders, including Gov. Ron DeSantis, publicly blasted publishers for attempting to “indoctrinate” students.

At the time, many were left confused as to why the state would not accept dozens of math textbooks over issues like critical race theory, which are generally not part of the mathematics curriculum.

Ahead of the midterms and his reelection campaign, DeSantis has pushed measures limiting how race can be taught in classrooms and defended Florida’s “Parental Rights in Education” bill, known by opponents as “Don’t Say Gay.” That bill bans teachers from leading classroom instructions on sexual orientation and gender identity for students in kindergarten through third grade.

DeSantis on Friday said the state will follow Florida standards and praised his education department for flagging the texts and sending them back to publishers to “take the nonsense out of the math books.”

“Two plus two equals four,” DeSantis said at an event in Ocala. “It’s not two plus two and let’s have a struggle session over that.”

The book reviews released Thursday illustrate that the Florida Department of Education asked its analysts a series of four questions on “special topics” that could ultimately disqualify a text from being adopted for use in classrooms across the state.

The state education department specifically sought to know if the books aligned with the state’s rule outlawing critical race theory, and if they included any snippets of “Culturally Responsive Teaching,” “Social Justice,” or social emotional learning, which aims to teach students how to manage their emotions and develop strong relationships with their peers. Florida’s Board of Education in 2021 passed a rule banning critical race theory along with The 1619 Project from The New York Times, claiming they are theories that “distort historical events.”

Critical race theory, an analytical framework developed by legal scholars, examines how race and racism have become ingrained in American law and institutions since slavery and Jim Crow.

In one example that caught the state’s attention, a reviewer noted that a high school statistics book included lessons on race that could violate the rule.

They pointed to pages that discussed “racial profiling in policing” and “discrimination in magnet school admission,” along with one instance in which the book mentioned there were “too many” white police officers in the NYPD compared with the racial makeup of the community.

This textbook, published by Pearson, was one of dozens renounced by the state. Another book from Pearson covering precalculus honors was dinged for a section that asked students what algebra can help tell about “racial bias.”

Florida originally rejected 54 of the 132 proposed math textbooks, some 41 percent, submitted by publishers, the bulk of which were proposed for kindergarten through fifth grade. Some 28 of the math textbooks — or 21 percent — were left off the adoption list due to “prohibited topics” including critical race theory, according to the state education department.

This decision initially left schools across Florida with only one textbook option for standard K-5 math. But the state has since adopted additional publishers after they tweaked their proposals.

To that end, two publishers seeking to provide K-5 math books were flagged by reviewers for broaching lessons on social emotional learning, according to the documents.

One second-grade book from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt was penalized on its alignment to state standards because “attempts at multicultural teaching” were evident in its text. The example given was “types of housing for different groups of people.”

Similarly, a McGraw Hill LLC book for fifth graders was rated as “very poor” for its social emotional learning lessons. The reviewer noted that one question “asks students to think about social and emotional learning competencies, including relationship skills and social awareness.”

Another book on Florida’s “not recommended” list, a Mathematics for College Liberal Arts text, was allegedly “biased” on climate change and emphasized that “racism is embedded in American society dependent on age,” according to one reviewer.

This book, a Pearson publication for high school students, contained exercises based on “an argument” between former Vice President Al Gore and conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh in which, the reviewer wrote, “You can tell the author favors Al Gore and dislikes Rush Limbaugh based on questions.”

This book includes a bar graph “measuring racial prejudice, by age,” an example previously cited by the FLDOE.

“Based solely on the Critical Race Theory elements, this book should not be considered for adoption,” according to the reviewer, who also criticized the author for “talking about a climate crisis as if it’s a proven fact.”

Textbook publishers, including McGraw Hill and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, have indicated they are appealing the state’s decision against adopting the books.

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Teaching Militarism, Not Critical Thinking

The Reynolds LET 1 course description apprises students that they will learn “leadership, follower, and citizenship skills.” JROTC is military training. Instead of teaching toward a just and peaceful world, military training emphasizes dominance and nationalism. In fact, once students enlist in the military, they are no longer guided by the United States Constitution. Rather they are governed by the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

The Pentagon contracts with Pearson to write JROTC curriculum, including social studies, health, and leadership textbooks. The local school district has no control over their content. No process exists for regular certified staff to review JROTC materials for appropriateness, accuracy, or conformity to educational standards.

Teachers focused on social justice are critical of the historical perspectives of many mainstream textbooks. But, because the JROTC curriculum is focused on developing leaders for the U.S. military, there is a specific danger to these texts. For example, Lesson 2 of the LET 3 textbook is titled “Ethical Choices, Decisions, and Consequences.” The authors compare and contrast the Vietnam and Iraq Wars. They state that the sole cause of the Vietnam War was containment of communism: “American military personnel began deploying to Vietnam in 1954 to strengthen the country against communist North Vietnam.” The authors cite then-President Johnson’s 1964 statements that North Vietnam attacked a U.S. destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin as the impetus for the broader war, ignoring overwhelming evidence from declassified documents that there was no such attack.

The narrative continues: “The United States went to war in Iraq as part of its global war on terrorism.” In the same paragraph, the authors introduce Osama bin Laden and explain the creation of al-Qaeda “to dislodge American forces in the Middle East.” The implication is clear—Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were working in cahoots to attack the United States. To further cement this alleged relationship, which did not exist, they quote George W. Bush: “Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists. Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints.” Nowhere in the case study or various historical timelines do the authors indicate that both Hussein and bin Laden were at one time strongly supported by the United States. Describing the arguments for the second Gulf War, the text notes a “lack of indisputable evidence” (as opposed to the presence of manufactured false evidence) that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

In outlining alternatives to these military invasions, the authors identify the only potential consequences as unacceptably negative. In the case of Vietnam, they cite the “domino theory,” which predicted one country after another becoming communist threats to the United States. In the case of Iraq, they quote then-President Bush without additional commentary: “We cannot wait for the final proof—the smoking gun—that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”

Lesson 3 is on “Global Citizenship Choices, Decisions, and Consequences.” The authors discuss intelligence as a tool of U.S. foreign policy: “The CIA focuses mostly on countries it thinks might be unfriendly. . . . Sometimes intelligence agencies have helped overturn the government of a country. . . . For example, the CIA took part in overthrowing the government of Salvador Allende. The United States government thought Allende was not favorable to our national interest. Like defense, diplomacy, foreign aid, and trade measures, intelligence is an important tool of foreign policy.” There is no questioning of the U.S.-led coup against the democratically elected president of Chile, nor is there any discussion of the consequences and implications of the decision.

“The greatest purveyor of violence...”

wired

FOR DECADES, THE major landmark of Balut, Tondo, a densely populated slum squeezed against Manila's North Harbor, was a monumental pile of often-smoldering trash nicknamed Smokey Mountain. "It used to be sort of pretty, actually," says Nellie Cruz, a lifelong resident. She points to the spot, now bulldozed, across a reeking, garbage-strewn canal from where we stand with her 13-year-old son, Aki.

The scene is humble, yes, but Nellie, a single mother, isn't destitute or desperate. She's a modern, upwardly mobile megacity dweller, the kind you're equally likely to meet in Shanghai or São Paulo, except with better English skills-the legacy of the Philippines' history as a US colony and one key to its current economic growth.

APEC is a different kind of school-one that's part of a for-profit chain and relatively low-cost at $2 a day.

Both Nellie and Aki carry iPhones, for example, though the devices were given to them by Nellie's sister, a nurse, who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Cruzes' immaculate, doll-size family compound has a caged rooster in the front yard, Christian inspirational wall decals, and a strong Wi-Fi signal. In contrast to the screen-time panic among US parents, Nellie is OK with her only child spending time in his attic bedroom, gaming and browsing science pages on Facebook, rather than out on the street exposed to the pounding sun, the omnipresent filth, and the drug gangs on the corner.

The same protective but ambitious impulses were at work when it came to choosing a school for Aki. He attended Catholic institutions when he was younger. Then Nellie lost her job in marketing. So for sixth grade, Aki went off to public school.

"There were 58 students in one classroom," he tells me. "Only some of us, the Section 1s"-top performers-"got to sit in the classroom. The others studied in the corridor." Nellie didn't like her quiet, polite child having to mix it up with kids "from all walks of life," as she puts it.

So for seventh grade they found a new option at the other end of the street from the public school, housed in a former umbrella factory. The sign outside reads "APEC Schools: Affordable World Class Education From Ayala and Pearson."

APEC isn't just new to Tondo or Manila. It's a different kind of school altogether: one that's part of a for-profit chain and relatively low-cost at $2 a day, what you might pay for a monthly smartphone bill here. The chain is a fast-growing joint venture between Ayala, one of the Philippines' biggest conglomerates, and Pearson, the largest education company in the world.

In the US, Pearson is best known as a major crafter of the Common Core tests used in many states. It also markets learning software, powers online college programs, and runs computer-based exams like the GMAT and the GED. In fact, Nellie already knew the name Pearson from the tests and prep her sister took to get into nursing school.

But the company has its eye on much, much more. Investment firm GSV Advisors recently estimated the annual global outlay on education at $5.5 trillion and growing rapidly. Let that number sink in for a second-it's a doozy. The figure is nearly on par with the global health care industry, but there is no Big Pharma yet in education. Most of that money circulates within government bureaucracies.

Pearson would like to become education's first major conglomerate, serving as the largest private provider of standardized tests, software, materials, and now the schools themselves.

To this end, the company is testing academic, financial, and technological models for fully privatized education on the world's poor. It's pursuing this strategy through a venture called the Pearson Affordable Learning Fund. Pearson allocated the fund an initial $15 million in 2012 and another $50 million in January 2015. Students in developing countries vastly outnumber those in wealthy nations, constituting a larger market for the company than students in the West. Here in the US, Pearson pursues its privatization agenda through charter schools that are run for profit but funded by taxpayers. It's hard to imagine the company won't apply what it learns from its global experiments as it continues to expand its offerings stateside.

The low-cost schools in the Philippines are one of Pearson's 11 equity investments in programs across Asia and Africa serving more than 360,000 students. Two of the most prominent, the Omega Schools in Ghana and Bridge International Academies based in Kenya, have hundreds of campuses charging as little as $6 a month. They locate in cheaply rented spaces, hire younger, less-experienced teachers, and train and pay them less than instructors at government-run schools. The company argues that by using a curriculum reflecting its expertise, plus digital technology-computers, tablets, software-it can deliver a more standardized, higher-quality education at a lower cost per student. All Pearson-backed schools agree to test students frequently and use software and analytics to track outcomes.

Not every Pearson-backed chain will succeed, but the company can use the outcomes to assess which models work best. Pearson will have a stake in the winners; the Affordable Learning Fund takes at least one seat on each board. The goal is to serve more than a million students by 2020.

Like any global scheme, the fund has a mastermind: Michael Barber, Pearson's white-haired, indomitable yet excruciatingly polite chief education adviser. As a McKinsey consultant to the nation of Pakistan starting in 2010, Barber implemented an educational system that now sees nearly three out of four residents of the second-largest city, Lahore, attend low-cost private schools, many paid for by government vouchers. Now he's taking his ideas global with Pearson.

The growth of privatized education is igniting a global debate. Last April, major teachers' unions in the US, UK, and South Africa signed a letter to Pearson CEO John Fallon that read in part: "By supporting the expansion of low-fee private schooling and other competitive practices, Pearson is essentially ensuring that a large number of the world's most vulnerable children have no hope of receiving free, quality education." In July, the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted a resolution that called for monitoring all private education providers.

Pearson's corporate reputation doesn't help matters. In the US, just the mention of its name is enough to make some education activists apoplectic. In 2014 the company was implicated in an FBI investigation of unfair bidding practices for a $1.3 billion deal to provide curricula via iPads to the students of Los Angeles Unified School District. Meanwhile, in New Jersey, Pearson monitored the social media accounts of students taking its Common Core tests and had state officials call district superintendents to have students disciplined for talking about the exam. Barber himself points out to me that his face appears as "the seventh-scariest person in education reform" on an anti-Common Core website.

Yet in many parts of the world, low-cost private schools are a big step up from existing public schools, where buildings may be falling down, philanthropic grants are used to line local officials' pockets, and teachers don't bother to show up. The father of Nobel laureate and youth education advocate Malala Yousafzai himself started a chain of low-cost private schools in Pakistan.

Barber's thesis is simple: If his company can offer a better option, millions of families like the Cruzes will vote with their feet. "Technology and globalization are going to change everything, including the status quo in education," he says.

"People think Pearson is this big company going after these markets in a predatory way," says Katelyn Donnelly, managing director of Pearson's Affordable Learning Fund. "I'm always like, wow, I wish we were milking money."

IT'S THE LAST week of the first academic year at Aki's new school in Tondo, and it feels pretty much like the last week of school anywhere. The students, four classes of seventh graders totaling 123 kids, are excited, dressed up for a play; their families are happy and proud.

Katelyn Donnelly, my companion in Manila, is the managing director of the Affordable Learning Fund. "We started here from the ground up," she says of APEC, explaining that she and Barber have taken a more hands-on role in the Philippines than in any of the other school systems that Pearson has invested in. "We were struggling to find the next couple of schools to back. So we thought, OK, well, maybe we can build one from scratch."

Their Filipino partner is Fred Ayala, who opened the first call center in the Philippines and eventually sold his business to the Ayala Corporation (no relation). Taken together, call-center and other white-collar work that can be done over phones or the Internet account for 1 million jobs in the island nation. Ayala thinks it should be twice that. "The limiting factor is the supply of skilled talent," he says. "You have education systems producing kids that have good academic foundations but are not as employable as the employers would like."

Ayala assembled a board of executives with international experience to create an education company that would mold middle and high school students into the perfect entry-level employees for foreign corporations. The execs had the on-the-ground knowledge and connections; Pearson brought the educational expertise and a $3 million investment.

The biggest obstacle to expanding here, Donnelly tells me, is the dearth of available facilities within safe walking distance for kids. So APEC decided to rent a few rooms here and there, close to students, in neighborhoods all over the city.

Because space is tight, the schools have no nurse's office and no science lab. Some have no gym or play space. One amenity offered everywhere is closed-circuit cameras, a nod to parents' paramount concern: physical safety.

Pearson models do vary by setting and the visions of individual entrepreneurs. All of them, though, save money on teachers and claim they still deliver a superior education-even though most research shows that teacher quality is the single most important factor in a student's education. Donnelly and Barber draw parallels to US charter schools, which employ younger, less-experienced teachers without union protections, and to Teach for America, which places recent college grads into the country's most challenging classrooms with just five weeks of training.

"You're getting younger, not-formally-qualified teachers, so you're paying them a lot less," Donnelly says. "You're providing a lot of the content and the training centrally and trying to figure out how you can make them successful. Each of our investments is doing that in slightly different ways." In the Philippines, teachers are supervised by a more experienced "master teacher" who floats between schools. In its first year, the school in Tondo had smaller class sizes than the nearby public school, but it doesn't plan for it to stay that way.

They may not be dissecting frogs, but they know how to shake hands and put together a PowerPoint.

The curriculum, designed with much input from Pearson, hints at innovative, progressive ideas about education, like interest-driven learning and collaboration. Every classroom has computers and Internet access. There are also frequent standardized tests and a custom-built software system that uses analytics to manage applications, admissions, parent satisfaction, and student outcomes.

Most important, all instruction is in English; that's the number one academic priority the parents I talk to mention. Students tutor each other in various subjects-Aki is a mentor in English and science but a mentee in math. Through the Life Labs curriculum, students work in groups to create public information campaigns on topics like safe smartphone use. They may not be dissecting frogs, but they know how to shake hands and put together a PowerPoint.

ABOUT A MONTH after my visit to Tondo, I sit over tea and sandwiches with Michael Barber in a cozy chamber at his airy offices on London's Strand. The white art deco building, overlooking the Thames, sports the largest clockface in the city, nicknamed Big Benzene for the building's first tenant, Shell oil. Barber, 59, is in the midst of treatment for a rare form of skin cancer. Although he's pale and thin, with a fresh scar behind his left ear from surgery, he makes a point of saying he has never felt better. He spent the previous day cycling some 50 miles in the English countryside.

Barber's quest to transform education began when he was a young man, married with three daughters, teaching school in a newly independent Zimbabwe in the early 1980s. His initial idealism about the yearning of rural black Africans for education and the aspirations raised by self-rule faded to frustration with the slow pace of change. Later he became a key member of Tony Blair's administration, where he focused on schools, health, and literally running the trains on time. Next came his stint at McKinsey, during which he started his work in Pakistan, and then he brought his mission to Pearson. He depicts working in the private sector as the ultimate expression of his pragmatism. "Are we going to get more children education by building more and more public schools?" he asks me. "In the developing world, that plan hasn't worked."

Pearson's Affordable Learning Fund, on the other hand, is winning the "ground war" of creating higher-functioning school systems, he says. Now it's time to tackle the "air war" of public opinion. "We want to be judged on our performance," he says.

The most comprehensive global review of research on low-cost private schools was published in 2014 by the UK's Department for International Development-and it's worth noting that Barber advised the agency on education in Pakistan at that time.

The review found strong evidence of better learning outcomes-that is, test scores-at private schools than at public schools. That's probably in part because the teaching is in fact better. Compared with teachers at government-run schools, which can be dogged by corruption, those at tuition-charging schools in developing countries are more likely to show up, to spend more time providing effective teaching, and to be paid regularly for it.

However, other analyses have pointed out that the students at fee-charging schools tend to come from families with a little more money, which generally correlates with higher test scores. There's an X factor too, harder to quantify: It could be that for-profit schools attract more parents like Nellie, who place more of an emphasis on education and whose children would therefore do better in any setting. Critics of charter schools in the US make a parallel argument, accusing them of "creaming off" the most engaged families.

On the negative side, the 2014 review found "weak and inconclusive evidence" that low-cost private schools are truly affordable or accessible to the poor.

Research by groups that oppose for-profit schools goes further. The Privatization in Education Research Initiative reports that when schools aren't free, poor students must work one day and go to school the next, and boys are educated in favor of girls. The official position of many groups, including the UN's Committee on the Rights of the Child, is that charging a fee, no matter how low, excludes the most needy and magnifies social divisions-like those between Aki and his neighbors in Tondo, for example.

History suggests they are right. Starting in the 1980s, the World Bank, as a condition of lending, pushed about 90 poor countries to raise revenue by charging fees to attend public schools. When evidence showed the tuition was excluding millions of children, a global campaign to abolish the fees gained traction, and in the early 2000s the World Bank dropped the policy. David Archer of the international development group ActionAid, who cofounded that campaign, believes that the power of "free" is one good reason school enrollment has risen by 50 million worldwide in the past 15 years. "The clear evidence is that when you charge children, the poorest cannot afford to go," he says.

Barber has an answer for that too: government-funded vouchers to make private schools free to the poor. "The question is, how do we get every child a good education? Not how we fix our public system," he says. "Parents know that education for their children is the only route out of poverty, and they have often been frustrated with public schools. Those who oppose choice for parents are really only opposing choice for the poor-the wealthy always have choice." Vouchers, he says, level the playing field.

Jishnu Das, a lead economist at the World Bank's Development Research Group, has questioned the data behind Barber's claims of great improvements in Pakistan's schools. He doesn't think much of the voucher idea either. He says it's perfectly fine for private providers to compete in the free market, just as they do in the preschool market in the US. If Nellie can afford $2 a day for her only child to have a chance at a better future, that's her prerogative.

But it's a real mistake, Das says, for government to put a thumb on the scale by diverting large amounts of cash away from already struggling public schools toward private providers: "If the government can't be trusted to run schools, it can't be trusted to price vouchers."

Some fear that Pearson's privatized school chains, like APEC in the Philippines (above), abandon the world's poorest and most vulnerable students.

DONNELLY FIRST MET Barber at McKinsey. She worked closely with him in Pakistan and came with him to Pearson in part to advance the low-cost model. "People think Pearson is this big company going after these markets in a predatory way," she says. "I'm always like, wow, I wish we were milking money."

Starting schools in the developing world is far from a quick or easy buck-margins are thin, costs and red tape must be cut as much as possible. "It's a struggle getting these companies breaking even and getting growth and trying to wade through a mire of regulations," she says.

The only check on its progress will be the tests that Pearson itself creates.

Still, in the Philippines at least, the odds favor Pearson's bet on APEC schools. The government is in the midst of a huge expansion of its school system, making 11th and 12th grades compulsory by 2017. That's 2.7 million more students in just two years. APEC's competing low-cost model is off to a good start, with 24 branches and 3,300 students and plans to add 5,700 more next school year.

It's hard to argue with the mission of local entrepreneurs like Fred Ayala who strive to offer a better educational option to their communities. In Tondo, Aki's mobile phone and his impeccable English, both of which he's currently using to learn about global warming and interstellar travel, really do look like catalysts for a better life for his family.

But a matchup between a $9 billion public company and the impoverished governments of developing countries looks lopsided, to say the least. If Pearson achieves its vision, only the most destitute would remain in public schools in the world's largest and fastest-growing cities. Or those schools would close down altogether, as governments increasingly outsource education-a fundamental driver of development and democracy, a basic human right, and a tool of self-determination-to a Western corporation. Teaching would become a low-paid, transient occupation requiring little training. And Pearson would try to bring the lessons it learns in Africa and Asia to education markets in the US and the UK.

One morning in Manila, I had breakfast at a five-star hotel with James Centenera, who had worked closely with Donnelly and was key to launching the APEC schools. In his view, for-profit schools have quickly become an accepted part of the educational landscape here-just another option. "I'm glad people have stopped asking whether the schools are better." Startled, I realized his remark spoke to a mantra of Barber's: irreversibility.

Pearson Foundation

Pearson PLC provides annual grants to fund Pearson Foundation, which describes itself as an "independent 501(c)(3) non-profit organization...collaborating with leading businesses, nonprofits, and education experts to share good practice; foster innovation; and find workable solutions to the educational disadvantages facing young people and adults across the globe."^[5] Pearson Foundation is a donor to the Foundation for Excellence in Education (FEE), a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) that accepts funding from many for profit corporations that also fund ALEC.^[6]

Pearson Foundation Pairs with Gates Foundation

In April 2011, the Pearson Foundation released news of a partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation where a "Grant from [the] Gates Foundation will help create comprehensive instructional system to prepare America's students to meet Common Core State Standards."^[7] With the money and research provided by the Gates Foundation, Pearson will create a series of courses in Math and English designed to teach the Common Core State Standards recently adopted by 41 states, two territories, and the District of Colombia. The Common Core Standards were developed by both the national Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), a non-profit group representing education commissioners.^[7] ^[8]

Pearson Foundation's Possible Violation of Federal Tax Code

In Michael Winerip's *New York Times* article, he reveals the Pearson Company's use of their non-profit Pearson Foundation, to promote business interests veiled as educational trips described as intended to expose U.S. education commissioners to "educators from around the world to get ideas for improving American public schools."^[8] Winerip however found evidence of numerous Pearson company executives also attending these international conferences suggesting that the Pearson Foundation's "educational trips" are more-so a vessel to bring together educations commissioners and Pearson executives. Tax law experts argued that such spending is in violation of the federal tax code but commissioners, the Pearson Foundation, and the Council of Chief State School Officers refuted accusations, continue to stress the value of these "educational trips", and ignored requests for information on conference attendees. Winerip reports that Pearson company and Pearson Foundation shared the same Vice President of strategic partnerships at the time and also found 12 Pearson company executives attended the Finland conference and 9 company executives attended a conference in Singapore. In their participation state education commissioners could also be violating state ethics laws, which had been inquired into by the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board. Commissioners from Illinois, Virginia, and Kentucky, states which pay Pearson from $57 million to $138 million for their standardized testing program, all attended the conferences.^[8] Additional evidence of Pearson Company benefiting from the Foundations trips include Kentucky choosing Pearson to run their test program despite a lower bid from competitor CTB/McGraw Hill after the commissioner blogged about attending a Foundation conference in China and receiving preferential choice and reference by Virginia. Michigan state commissioner even admitted that ethical concerns drove him to stop attending the conferences.^[8]

Lobbying

From 2010 to May 2013, Pearson Education spent $3,200,000 on lobbying. Pearson Education's lobbyists are Steven Kingsley and David Mullaney. ^[9]

2012 Pearson Reports Reflect Prioritizing Profits Over Advancement in Education

Financial reports summarizing Pearson's profits and growth that were recently made available online were met with scrutiny upon inspection. In a *Huffington Post* blog, Alan Singer assessed the foundation's financial summary and outlook, writing, "Something consistently missing in a report that emphasizes growth and profit is students and whether Pearson's high tech snake oil actually promotes student learning." Singer also notes that "Pearson has been able to extract these profitable deals through a systematic campaign of buying good will from state and local officials and educational institutions."^[10]

Pearson Contracts

Pearson holds a five year contract worth nearly $500 million to write and administer exams in Texas. ^[3]

Board of Directors

Accessed June 2013: ^[11]

Glen Moreno - Chairman
John Fallon - Chief executive
Robin Freestone - Chief financial officer
Will Ethridge - Chief executive, North American Education
Rona Fairhead - Chief executive, Financial Times Group
John Makinson - Chairman and chief executive, Penguin Group
David Arculus - Non-executive director
Ken Hydon - Non-executive director
Susan Fuhrman - Non-executive director
Joshua Lewis - Non-executive director
Vivienne Cox - Non-executive director

DN 4/17/15 teachers not allowed to see test (in advance?) proprietary,restrict access to results?

jailled 10 years cheat/fraud

textbooks 9/14:

Tuesday's hearing comes on the heels of several reports claiming the proposed social-science textbooks, which span grades K-12, are rife with bias and factual errors. One analysis commissioned by the Texas Freedom Network, a nonprofit watchdog that advocates church-state separation, found that some materials downplayed the hardships blacks faced under segregation and "gave nods to neo-Confederate arguments" that states' rights rather than slavery was the driving issue behind the Civil War. The group also maintains that some books take a tea party line on issues such as taxation. As an example, TFN cites a passage in the high school American government text submitted by Pearson, the world's largest textbook publisher:

In the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. taxes are "what we pay for civilized society." Society does not appear to be much more civilized today than it was when Justice Holmes made that observation in 1927. However, "what we pay" has certainly gone up.

The book makes no mention of the potential benefits of taxation, including safety net programs such as Social Security and Medicare, that have been adopted since 1927 and have slashed poverty, especially among the elderly. In another chapter, the Pearson text takes aim at affirmative action with a cartoon showing two aliens in a space ship landing on Earth. Pointing toward a man in a suit and tie, one of them exclaims: "This planet is great!—He says we qualify for affirmative action!" The only context is a caption asking readers to parse the cartoon's meaning.

Another report, released Monday by the Oakland-based National Center for Science Education, which has previously clashed with the Board of Education over its dubious treatment of evolution, highlights a handful of "deeply concerning" passages in those social-science texts that deal with climate change. The report cites a passage in the teacher's edition of the sixth grade World Cultures & Geography text issued by McGraw-Hill, the nation's second largest textbook publisher:

Scientists agree that Earth's climate is changing. They do not agree on what is causing the change. Is it just another natural warming cycle like so many cycles that have occurred in the past? Scientists who support this position cite thousands of years' worth of natural climatic change as evidence. Or is climate change anthropogenic—caused by human activity? Scientists who support this position cite the warming effect of rapidly increasing amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

The book goes on to quote two reports on global warming. One is from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a global outfit comprised of climate scientists who have assembled a vast body of evidence that human beings are to blame; the other is from the Heartland Institute, a conservative think thank, which has a long history of shilling for dirty industries (including Big Oil) and has tried to undermine the science linking human activity to climate change. "Scientists who study the issue say it is impossible to tell if the recent small warming trend is natural," reads the Heartland passage quoted in the book. "Thousands of peer-reviewed articles point to natural sources of climate variability that could explain some or even all of the warming in the second half of the twentieth century."

Pearson's fifth-grade social-studies book contains a similarly skewed description of climate change:

Burning oil to run cars also releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Some scientists believe that this carbon dioxide could lead to a slow heating of Earth's overall climate. This temperature change is known as global warming or climate change. Scientists disagree about what is causing climate change.

In reality, as NCSE points out, there's no indication that climate change is a passing phase, and 97 percent of climate scientists agree that human activity is the primary driver.

Besides distorting the underlying science, NCSE's programs and policy director Josh Rosenau says many of the 104 social-studies textbooks up from review give climate change short shrift. "In this day, social-studies education ought to include an in-depth discussion of climate change," he told Mother Jones. "There are serious policy implications. There are cultural, geographic, and economic consequences. But if you include the topic, it becomes a flash point with conservatives on the Board of Education."

The current crop of textbooks were written to comply with a set of standards that the Texas State Board of Education, then controlled by a group of ultra-conservatives, crafted in 2010 with input from a cadre of hand-picked "experts." Among them were conservative culture warriors such as David Barton, a self-styled historian with deep ties to the Republican Party who argues that the principle of church-state separation is a myth. As a result, the books are required to glorify free-market capitalism, promote America's Christian heritage, and pay tribute to conservative icons, such as Newt Gingrich and Phyllis Schlafly.

Comments from Tuesday's hearing will be forwarded to publishers, who are allowed to make changes but tend to be wary of doing anything that will put them at odds with the board. The final vote on which books to adopt will be held November. Under a new Texas law, board members can only vote to reject books that have blatant factual errors or fail to meet at least half of the state's requirements, meaning it may be too late to address some of the concerns raised by Texas citizens. As Republican board member Thomas Ratliff put it last week, "If there's a complaint about the standards, that ship has sailed."

Ratliff struck a more diplomatic note during Tuesday's meeting. "....

===

This year, ALEC has a new executive director, Lisa Britton Nelson, who is a former lobbyist forVisa and AOL Time Warner -- both of which have had ties to ALEC -- and also worked with Newt Gingrich and GOPAC. Several new companies also recently joined its "Private Enterprise Advisory Council": NetChoice, the National Federation of Independent Business, and K12 Inc.

Changing Laws Providing for Public Education

The "Affordable Baccalaureate Degree Act" would enrich companies invested in online college degree programs and materials -- like Pearson (whose subsidiary Connections Education has been a prominent member of ALEC's Education Task Force), which sells the LearningStudio platform used by many universities like Arizona State University'spopular and much-hyped online degree program. It would "require all pubic [sic] four-year universities to offer bachelor's degrees costing no more than $10,000, total, for four years of tuition, fees, and books. The Act would require that ten percent of all public, four-year university degrees awarded reach this price-point within four years of passage of this act." The bill instructs universities to focus on online and blended learning "to achieve this price-point."
The "Public Charter Schools Act" would expand on ALEC's pre-existing "Next Generation Charter Schools Act" and enrich ALEC members like K12, Inc., the nation's largest provider of online charter schools or cyber schools. It would allow privately-operated charter schools to continue taking public funds, but without public accountability. The bill would give charter schools carte blanche to operate without being "subject to the state's education statutes or any state or local rule, regulation, policy, or procedure relating to non-charter public schools within an applicable local school district..."
The related "Public Charter Schools Funding Act" restates charters' autonomy from the rule of law and democratically-elected school boards while still giving each charter school "one hundred percent" of the state and federal education funding "calculated pursuant to the state's funding formula for school districts."

===

Connections Academy is now owned by the UK's PearsonConnections Academy, which previously co-chaired ALEC's Education Task Force for a number of years and funded ALEC, is also a funder of FEE. Connections Academy is a division of Connections Education LLC, an entity based in Baltimore, Maryland, that contracts with charter schools, school districts, or governmental entities to provide "online" lessons to students.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Pearson

Pearson plc is an international media company with its major business units comprising Pearson Education, the FT Group (publisher of the Financial Times) and book publisher Penguin Group.

Contents [hide]

Board

Accessed June 2012: ^[1]

Glen Moreno - Chairman
Marjorie Scardino - Chief executive
Robin Freestone - Chief financial officer
Will Ethridge - Chief executive, North American Education
Rona Fairhead - Chief executive, Financial Times Group
John Makinson - Chairman and chief executive, Penguin Group
David Arculus - Non-executive director
Patrick Cescau - Non-executive director
Susan Fuhrman - Non-executive director
Ken Hydon - Non-executive director
Joshua Lewis - Non-executive director
Vivienne Cox - Non-executive director

Contact details

Pearson UK

80 Strand

London, WC2R 0RL

Tel: +44 207 010 2000

Web: http://www.pearson.com/about/index.shtml

Pearson US

Pearson Inc.

1330 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10019

USA

Tel. +1 212 641 2400

Resources and articles

Related Sourcewatch

David Bell - former Chairman
David Verey
Vernon Sankey - former board member (1993-2006)
Pippa Wicks
Raphael Mokades

References

↑ Pearson Board, organizational web page, accessed June 25, 2012.

This article is a stub. You can help by expanding it.

wik

...

21st century[edit]

In September 2000, Pearson acquired National Computer Systems (NCS, Inc.) and entered the educational assessment and school management systems market in the United States.^[13] That same year, Pearson acquired Dorling Kindersley, the illustrated reference publisher and integrated it within Penguin.^[14] In 2002, Pearson purchased Rough Guides, the travel publisher, and brought it under Penguin. In that year, Pearson merged its TV arm with CLT-UFA to form the Luxembourg based media conglomerate RTL Group, the largest commercial television and radio broadcaster in the EU, with the production arm formingFremantleMedia.

In January 2003, Pearson sold its 22% stake in RTL Group.^[15] Also in 2003 it secured control of Edexcel.^[16] Pearson subsequently purchased a series of other testing and assessment businesses, beginning with Knowledge Technologies in 2004,^[17] AGS in 2005,^[18] and National Evaluation Systems^[19] and Promissor in 2006.^[20]

In April 2004, Pearson acquired about 80% stake in Meximerica Media Inc for $16.5 million for the swelling U.S. Hispanic market.^[21]

In April 2006, Pearson acquired National Evaluation Systems, Inc. (NES; Amherst, MA), a provider of customised state assessments for teacher certification in the US.^[22] In May 2007, Pearson announced that it had agreed to acquire Harcourt Assessment and Harcourt Education International from Reed Elsevier for $950m in cash.^[23] Pearson completed the acquisition of Harcourt Assessment on 30 January 2008, merging the acquired businesses into Pearson Assessment & Information.^[24] In that same year, Pearson acquired eCollege, a digital learning technology group for $477m.

In February 2008, Pearson announced the sale of its Pearson Data Management Division (formerly the scanner manufacturing and servicing division of NCS Inc.) to **Scantron** Corporation(part of M&F Worldwide) which had been its main competitor.^[25] Pearson acquired Wall Street English for $145m in 2009. In 2010, Pearson sold its 61% stake in Interactive Data to investment funds managed by Silver Lake Partners and Warburg Pincus for $2 billion. In the same year, Pearson acquired school learning systems( sistema COC de ensino) division of Sistema Educacional Brasileiro (SEB) for $497m.

In July 2011 Pearson announced the creation of Pearson College, a British degree provider based in London and Manchester.^[26][27] Also in 2011, Pearson acquired Connections Education and agreed to sell its 50% stake in FTSE International Limited to the London Stock Exchange for £450 million. In May 2012 Pearson announced its pending acquisition of GlobalEnglish Corporation, a Silicon Valley, California Business English software and solutions company, in an all-cash transaction ^[28] and they were officially acquired by Pearson on July 5, 2012. In October 2012, Pearson entered into talks with rival conglomerateBertelsmann, over the possibility of combining their respective publishing companies, Penguin Group and Random House. The houses are considered two of the "Big Six" publishing companies.^[29] On 29 October 2012, Pearson said it would merge Penguin Books with Bertelsmann's Random House to create the world's biggest consumer book publisher.^[30]

In May 2013, Pearson announced a new organization structure in order to accelerate their push into digital learning, education services and emerging markets. The change also supports the decoupling of the Penguin consumer publishing business into a separate entity with Random House (forming Penguin Random House). The new structure combines the separate education companies, Pearson International and Pearson North America under one Pearson company. Pearson will organize around three global lines of business – School, Higher Education and Professional. The Financial Times Group and Pearson English will form part of Pearson Professional.^[6]

Operations[edit]

Pearson is organised into three main business groupings: Pearson School, Pearson Higher Education and Pearson Professional (includes Financial Times Group and Pearson English). In 2011 Pearson generated total revenues of £5.9 billion, of which £4,390 million were from Pearson Education, £1,045 million from Penguin Group, and £427 million from Financial Times Group.^[31] In 2011, 60% of Pearson's revenues were generated in North America, 23% in Europe, 11% in Asia, and 6% in the rest of the world.^[31]

Pearson School[edit]

Pearson School was created when the School businesses from Pearson International and Pearson North America were merged in 2013. They provide textbooks and digital technologies to teachers and students across school ages. Pearson's school brands include BTEC, Bug Club, Edexcel, Fronter, GradPoint, PowerSchool, Schoolnet, and SuccessNet.

Pearson Higher Education[edit]

Pearson Higher Education was created when the Higher Education businesses from Pearson International and Pearson North America were merged in 2013. They provide textbooks and digital technologies to teachers and students across Higher Education. Pearson's higher education brands include eCollege, Mastering/MyLabs and Financial Times Publishing.

Pearson Professional[edit]

Pearson Professional includes the Financial Times Group, Pearson English, and Pearson VUE. The FT Group provides business and financial news, data, comment and analysis, in print and online. FT Publishing includes: the Financial Times newspaper and FT.com website; a range of specialist financial magazines and online services; and Mergermarket, a financial data vendor.^[31] The FT Group also has shareholdings in The Economist Group (50% stake).^[31]

Pearson English provides textbooks, digital technologies and education services to teachers and students across English-language learning. Pearson English is made up of: Global English, English language e-Learning for large corporations; Wall Street English, English language schools for business professionals; and Pearson ELT, English language textbooks and e-Learning business.

Pearson VUE is a provider in electronic testing for regulatory and certification boards.

Criticism[edit]

Concerns exist around the amount of influence a for-profit company (Pearson) has on public education.^[32] Other concerns are around the multi-million dollar contracts, and in one instance, laying off teachers offset the high costs of testing.

^[33] Edexcel is the only large examination board to be held in private hands. Rod Bristow is the leader of Pearson's UK education business, which includes Edexcel.^[34] Edexcel's change from a charity to a profit-making company has led to criticisms and calls into question conflict of interest within the education system. As a part of Pearson (a private publisher) Edexcel has produced qualifications which link to Pearson texts, although Edexcel also continues to endorse textbooks published by other companies.^[16] Edexcel is regulated by Ofqual (the regulator for UK qualifications).

References[edit]

:{:{Kathleen Carroll, a former government lawyer turned whistleblower at the California Commission On Teacher Credentialing CTC has filed a potentially explosive suit against CTC officials and the state government that charges that the Commission attorneys and management of the commission were engaged in numerous illegal acts possibly resulting in thousands of improperly sanctioned teachers in the state of California. Some of the charges in Carroll's charged the commission with tampering with the selection and composition of the Committee of credential members, CTC attorneys improperly tampering with case outcomes, acting outside their legal jurisdictional scope to go after teachers, promoting the existence of a high level of nepotism, cronyism, favoritism and conflicts of interest throughout the CTC and improperly maintaining underground regulations in violation of the administrative procedures act. It also alleges that CTC employees were retaliated against if they questioned the practices of anyone within CTC management.

This case which was filed on November 14, 2012 in the Superior Court in Sacramento County also has national implications as teachers continue to be demonized, bullied, retaliated against for reporting wrongdoing by school administrators and continually losing their jobs all under the guise of education reform.

Carroll v Commission on Teacher Credentialing et al., Sacramento Superior Court, Case No. 34-2012-00135527

http://www.upwa.info/documents/Carroll-v.-CTC.pdf

The above suit implies that the critical Commission on Teacher Credentialing might have been used as a vehicle to illegally prevent credentialing of public school teachers so that they would be forced to go to work at non-union charters throughout California and top staff including it's lawyers were involved in violating the California Education Code and other state and federal laws protecting the rights of teachers and students in California. The complaint also cites potential violations of the privacy rights of student records, found in the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).

The Commission is a critical education administrative body funded by the Credential holders themselves through application fees and exam fees. CTC is in charge of licensing California teachers, school administrators, and other school personnel. It is also involved in investigating misconduct complaints against credential holders and applicants, approving teacher preparation programs, including through charter chains and entering into contracts with private entities such as NCS Pearson in the development of education testing, teacher evaluations and curriculum development in California. The CTC also has a Committee on Accreditation which presumably accredits credential preparation programs.

It has played a key role in approving alternative routes to teacher certification, approval of teacher preparation programs within charter chains and for-profit colleges and has been intimately involved in teacher evaluations through its contract with the testing and publishing giant NCS Pearson. All of this government decision making while a number of its Commissioners were connected personally or financially with the industry they are supposed to regulate.

Carroll, who was a lawyer at the Commission on Teacher Credentialing for four years was fired after she blew the whistle and helped initiate an audit of the state commission which is directly under Governor Brown and the executive branch. In fact, her firing took place right in the middle of a state audit which included her reporting on the numerous illegal acts.

The California state auditors never independently verified the magnitude of the backlog, instead relying on the assertions of CTC management; individuals Carroll asserted were being dishonest about the existence of and specifics of the backlog in the first instance. CTC management asserted that over 12,000 misconduct reports were backlogged, but the actual number of delayed misconduct reports is still unknown due to the manipulated state audit.

Under the California Education Code section 44242.5, the CTC can investigate teachers by their receipt of particular types of information as outlined in the education code. The commission attorneys according to Carroll, were fishing for information about teachers and opening up cases in which they did not have jurisdiction. This could mean that thousands of teachers have been illegally sanctioned and prevented from receiving credentials in California. Without a credential, they cannot work, which would destroy their careers forcing many into bankruptcy, and possible loss of their homes.

This suit is critical as the push to deprive teachers of their due process rights continues throughout the state. Teachers at Los Angeles Unified report being detained unlawfully for hours in small cubicles without any means of communicating with anyone while detained. If these teacher jails sound shocking, they are- they are meant to break down the will of fully credentialed teachers in the push to replace them with less qualified, non-unionized staff.

As a result of not getting their state credentials because of illegal actions by government officials, potentially thousands of California teachers were also forced into non union low paying charters throughout the state, many of which do not require state teaching credentials. If true, the public has been defrauded, numerous teachers and others have been illegally harmed and thrown into abject poverty. And public education has been purposefully thrown into chaos at the hands of very dishonest, unethical and illegal actors.

It should be noted that NCS Pearson Inc., a third party contractor of CTC is being criminally investigated by the NY Attorney General along with other states for illegal kickbacks to officials who were voting on contracts for k-12 tests and certification tests. Pearson is also involved in the design of the common core standards and teacher assessments.

NCS Pearson controls a large part of public education funding through their publishing empire, evaluations of teachers, tests and through their design of the "common core" standards. In essence Pearson has a virtual monopoly grip on public education funds in the United States.

Ting Sung was chair of the CTC commission at the same time she worked at the Natomas charter school that she founded with her husband, was also being paid by the California Charter Association CCA and Cambridge education as a senior education consultant and was supposed to be a "public" representative of the CTC. Sun is also on the board of the Turkish Gulen charter school chain called Magnolia Public Schools which is the largest charter operator in the US and has schools in the Sacramento area and throughout the state. The Gulen school chain has been involved in corrupt practices throughout the US in which teachers from the cult which runs the school, have been forced to give kickbacks to the Gulen cult and public funds have flowed only to Gulen owned businesses. CBS 60 minutes did a story on this chain and the Iman, Fatullah Gulen, who runs it from Pennsylvania.

It appears that Ting Sun failed to disclose a number of economic conflicts on her Fair Political Practices Commission FPPC form 700 which are required of all commission members since they are voting on contracts with public funds going to private companies. The question again arises where was the senate rules committee in performing their required due diligence on Sun before her senate confirmation to the CTC?

According to the suit, Carroll reported to Ting Sun that Mary Armstrong, Director of Professional Practices at the commission had lied to the commission about the specifics of the backlog of misconduct reports and cases. Carroll also reported to CTC Director Dale Janssen that misconduct reports and cases that were not being timely processed which could cause serious harm to students and also involved delayed sexual misconduct reports, including school district reports. Carroll also reported to Janssen that there was a high level of cronyism, nepotism and favoritism that was creating a negative impact on the working environment as employees of the CTC were fearful of retaliation.

Right after Carroll complained to Janssen, Janssen according to the suit hired an investigator who then sought to discredit Carroll included releasing private medical information about Carroll which was irrelevant to the existence of and specifics of the backlog. Was this an improper use of public funds?

In June of 2010, Janssen, Armstrong and Director of Administrative Services Christa Hill proposed to lay off Carroll supposedly as a "cost cutting" measure. But, when CTC realized the layoff would not be fast enough to get rid of Carroll before the state auditors arrived at CTC, they moved for dismissal.

Carroll had discovered that not only was the CTC illegally investigating some teachers but they were retaliating against CTC employees and educators based on perceived medical health disabilities and retaliated against any employee who questioned these methods. There was an epidemic of bullying at the commission with many employees working in fear.

Carroll was also denied union representation when Pope showed up at her office door demanding that she accompany him to the HR department. This was right in the middle of the audit and after Carroll had numerous meetings with the state auditors.

The California state audit of CTC, requested by California Senate Pro Tem Democratic party leader Darrell Steinberg was based on a complaint by Carroll on the massive systemic backlog of misconduct reports at CTC, illegal actions on part of the CTC attorneys and rampant nepotism, favoritism and potential conflicts throughout the agency. Carroll had met with Steinberg's staff and asked to have the audit but instead of having a real independent investigation, Steinberg and his staff made changes in the audit request. The State Auditor failed to account for a number of items requested by the Joint Legislative Audit Committee at Steinberg's request, citing CTC's failure to track documents and numerous computer problems. Carroll reported numerous violations that never found their way into the audit report. Was this a case of government damage control? Who was suppressing the evidence? Steinberg's office? The state auditor? Or both? Carroll has now suffered severe economic harm as result of reporting serious illegal acts by government officials.

A key player in Steinberg's office was his education advisor Susanna Cooper whose husband it turns out is Eric Douglas who owns Leading Resources inc. Leading Resources Inc has a number of public agency clients including the Bureau of State Audits which was doing the audit of the CTC. Cooper is also on the advisory board of WestEd. On May 5, 2010, the morning before the Joint Legislative Audit Committee voted on the audit request of CTC, Cooper sent an e-mail to Carroll's office e-mail address at CTC essentially sending her the draft of what she would say on behalf of Steinberg at this hearing. Carroll had informed all of Steinberg's staff about the fear of retaliation at the CTC and was shocked that Cooper had sent her this email at CTC since there was a real possibility that her e-mail was being monitored by this time.

After the audit report of CTC was released to the public on April 7, 2011, an oversight hearing took place at the Capitol. Carroll testified at this oversight hearing. As Carroll began to speak about the CTC attorneys looking at teachers they had no right to look at, Assembly member Ricardo Lara cut her off and told her that her time was up. After Carroll spoke, not one assembly person or senator had questions of Carroll about the systemic problems at the Commission despite the extensive material received about the specifics of the backlog and misconduct and the reign of harassment and bullying against CTC employees.

After the state audit oversight hearing, Executive Director Dale Janssen, Director of the Professional Practices Mary Armstrong and Assistant General Counsel Willard Leroy Pope all quickly left the CTC. Pope also had children on the payroll. Others have also left the agency. Willard Leroy Pope was replaced by attorney/ALJ Michael Barth. Barth was an ALJ for the Office of Administrative hearings, the special education division. Query what type of potential conflicts Barth's employment at CTC might pose. Barth previously worked for the CTC after leaving the employ of the law firm of Rothschild Wishek & Sands. The Rothschild firm has a contract with the California Teachers Association and represents teachers who come up for review by the CTC. Previously after Barth left the Rothschild firm, CTC had some sort of conflict cone set up around Barth. Given the numerous potential liability that conflicts pose for any entity, it is a wonder why CTC could not find a more neutral candidate for the job. Was this act purposeful? Time will tell.

This lawsuit has the potential to expose a lot, including the real possibility of criminal violations, including the conflicts of interest in the drive to shutdown public education and turn this system over to privatizers and billionaire speculators who see this as a growing area for high profits and little costs with no regard to a quality accessible public education system and certainly with no regard to human suffering as numerous people who report illegal acts get severely retaliated against. Economic harm is a powerful weapon and is used and abused too frequently by those in positions of power.}:}:

:{:{By Steve Zeltzer

lvpsf@igc.org}:}: