4 ms·
No discussion about the Common Core is complete without pointing out how it's allowed the for-profit entity Pearson to monopolize k-12 education in this country
by thefastlane 11y ago
No discussion about the Common Core is complete without pointing out how it's allowed the for-profit entity Pearson to monopolize k-12 education in this country.
You want to talk about the Common Core? Keep the for-profit sector out of it, and then we'll talk.
It's a little silly to point fingers at unions and parents whilst ignoring Pearson in all of this -- unless you work for Pearson, I guess.
- mcphage 11y agoYou can drop common core, but you're not going to get rid of Pearson. They were heaving involved in the curricula that came before common core, and they'll be heavily involved with whatever comes next.
- jacobolus 11y agoYes, but when you have a centralized high-level mandate attached to the money schools spend on books and other materials there’s no room for individual teachers, schools, school districts, or states to experiment or adapt for their own local conditions, because only a small handful of publishers have the resources to get their publications certified by the centralized vetting committee. As an example, my elementary school in the mid-1990s was required by California to buy new math textbooks, and even though the school didn’t want any of the ones that qualified, thinking the books they already had to be better and the mandated books to be complete crap, they had no choice but to buy the new books because otherwise the school would lose the entire yearly book budget from the state (there was a bit more diversity in the allowed books for other subjects, so they did want those). As a bunch of dedicated, opinionated teachers, they refused to use the new inferior math books, but mandates are mandates so they bought them and put them in a box in a closet in the library. Great for the publisher, huge waste for everyone else.