Pearson--a digital hydra in education

Pearson is the vertically integrated corporate 'answer' to every educational need

Pearson is a UK-based company, self described as the "world's leading learning company."  Its owner is the company that publishes the Economist, a newsmagazine aimed at a transnational corporate audience.  Pearson was also the publisher of Penguin books until it spun off Penguin to merge to another major book trade publisher.  Pearson's strategy now is to concentrate on education as its source of income and profits.

The biggest corporate players in education before the digital age were textbook publishers.  The creation of ebooks and the use of online information sources have dramatically reduced the production of textbooks as well as encyclopaedias.  Britannica has stopped printing its encyclopaedia and most textbook publishers have seen rapid declines in revenues from that source.

Pearson has been the most successful of the former textbook publishers to develop a revenue stream from digital sources, although others are going digital and merging with other companies.  Pearson has achieved growth through diversification and its revenue growth has been supported by moving into what it calls "emerging markets," particularly in Latin America.  Pearson expands its penetration into edtech by buying  up both established companies and supports potential developments through its edtech "accelerator program."

The Hydra nature of digital Pearson

Pearson has a product for every stage of the education process, building on and expanding the "harmonization" and globalization of education.  Pearson talks about the "education industry;"  others call it the "education-industrial complex," drawing on warnings about the influence of the military-industrial complex.

*Curriculum and standards--the Pearson Foundation played a role with the Gates Foundation in the creation of the Common Core Curriculum being imposed in many states in the U.S.  The non-profit Pearson Foundation was fined $7.7 million in New York for using Foundation funds to create resources sold by the Pearson corporation.

*Courses for the Common Core Curriculum--the Pearson Foundation, in conjunction with the Gates Foundation, created several online K-12 courses offered on a free basis.  These, however, lead to another set of courses that are offered for sale by the Pearson Corporation

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*Digital resources--it continues to publish hardcover textbooks for part of the market, but has expanded to  etextbooks and a wide range of other digital teaching resources.   Pearson is the largest digital content provider for education.

*Sharing resources developed by teachers at no cost--Pearson provides an "open source" learning management system, "OpenClass," where teachers can post the courses and resources they have developed, providing content for Pearson at no cost for development of development of the resources. 

*Testing--it has developed standardized tests for state curriculum in the past and now for multiple states which have adopted the U.S. Common Core Curriculum.

*Test preparation--"MyLab" provides digital preparation for standardized tests, many of which are  produced by Pearson.

*Test cheats--New York has a contract with Pearson to look for irregularities in test results.

*Operation of schools--Pearson is investing 10 million in private schools in the "developing world" as well as Charter schools.

*Student Information Systems--PowerSchool, the Pearson student information system,  is used in many jurisdictions to hold information on students--demographic data, grades, test results, information on behavior and more.  It provides a dashboard for decision-makers using the data collected.

*Alternative high school examination--it offers a new test to be used in the US as a way of getting high school equivalency for those who have dropped out of attending school or have failed required courses for graduation.

*Teacher licensing test--Pearson, along with Stanford University,  has developed a Teacher Performance Assessment  to be used by teacher education institutions to identify those who should be allowed to become teachers.  In the United Kingdom, it offers "Pearson's Teacher Training and Certification Program."

*PISA--Pearson has a contract with the OECD to produce and administer the next international PISA examination with a focus on science in2015 as a computer-based exam.

 

*Recommendations for education reform--though its Economist  'intelligence reports' it gives advice to countries and school authorities on education policy based on PISA and other data--recommendations on curriculum, resources, student data, teacher education and the like.

 

This is a closed feedback loop--Pearson has a product for every stage of the education process with information systems that can make recommendations to Pearson for what it should develop or purchase and to make sales pitches disguised as recommendations to school authorities on content and policies.

[Marvel comics says of their Hydra that "Hydra is a world-wide subversive organization dedicated to global domination."]

Pearson acts as a quasi-government agency

As a company owned by shareholders, Pearson must place emphasis on profits as its primary objective.  In early 2014, when revenues were less than projected, the value of shares dropped significantly over night.  The primary motivation of a corporation in the "education industry" must be to make profits, not to engage in philosophical discussion of what a society wants from its education system and how it should be organized to meet social objectives.

Pearson doesn't just wait for customers to come to it.  According to Michelle Davis writing in Education Week, "Pearson Education has spent more than $6 million over the past decade lobbying at the federal level (in the U.S.)."  (Davis, 2013)

Diane Ravitch has commented that "Pearson is overstepping the bounds of the role of a profit-making business.  The corporation is acting as a quasi-government agency in several instances, but it is not a quasi-government agency:  it is a business that sells products and services.  What part of the field of education does Pearson not manage?." (Mansell, 2012)

References:

Davis, M.  (2013). "Ed. Companies Exert Public-Policy Influence."  Downloaded April 4, 2013 from http://bit.ly/1cgSNzf

Gutstein, D.  (2012).  "Pearson's plan to control education."  Downloaded February 7, 2014 from http://www.bctf.ca/uploadedFiles/Public/Issues/Privatization/PearsonGutsteinReport.pdf

Mansell, W.  (2012).  "Should Pearson, a giant multinational, be influencing our education policy?"  Downloaded July 23, 2012 from http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/jul/16/pearson-multinational-influence-education-policy

Corporations in education: Pearson and Google

Corporate intrusion into education through technology:  Pearson and Google

Big corporate players are rightly convinced that technology use in education is only going to grow--and this has potential for big profits.  Genuine applications of technology could expand opportunities for educational development and make education more accessible for everyone.  Technology also offers significant symbolic value in giving a message that education is in tune with a nation's participation in the global economy.

However, the challenge for corporations within the capitalist system is to position themselves to make potential profits in the rapidly evolving environment of digital education.  Meeting social objectives of equity and open participation do not drive corporate decisions, unless they can be framed to meet profit objectives.

Information and Communications technologies are a Trojan Horse for privatization and marketization of education.

Pearson and Google are the two of the largest players in the race for profits from education.  However, they represent two very different strategies for defining their role in the contest:  Pearson as a vertically integrated, trans-national corporation focused on selling content and services;  Google as a platform that provides service to teachers and students through a range of "education apps," some for "free" and others managed on a fee paying basis for education institutions, school districts or schools.

In looking at individual aspects of the educational offering of both Pearson and Google, they may seen benign or even positive.  However, with an examination of the breadth of what is offered by both, it is obvious that they can have an excessive influence on education.  It is the interaction and inter-relationship of the different elements of their businesses that provide them with the power to dominate in educational decisions.  Rather than collective decision-making about education through public processes, decisions about what should be done and what tools exist are driven by private interests through a relentless search for profits.

Two further posts will provide details of the corporate strategies of Pearson and of Google

Technology is globalizing and colonizing

FECODE, the teachers’ union in Colombia, sponsored six seminars in different cities in Colombia in November 2013, where they asked me to talk about technology, education and critical pedagogy.  Participants in the seminar wrote out questions for discussion following my presentations.  When question time ran out, I agreed to respond to the other questions in writing.  I have combined questions into some specific themes, with this being the third of three.

What actions are possible in responding to technology that is globalizing and colonizing?

ICTs as they have been developed and disbursed are instruments that serve the interests of neo-liberal, global capitalism.

Governments everywhere are driven to want  students to become workers in a global economy. Students using ICTs are seen to be a key component in a global race and thus, the schools are pressed to accommodate these tools into the classroom, regardless of lack of adequate models or proven results.

ICTs have largely been developed in North America and Europe with much of the production of the hardware done in Asia.  These reflect the interests, values and perspectives of the places they have been developed.

All technologies have built into them a social order, according to Langdon Winner.  Marshall McLuhan said that "we shape our technologies, and then our technologies shape us."

For much of the world, there has been no opportunity to shape the technology, but the technology has been disseminated in ways that shape their education system and society.  That has been the colonizing factor of the development of ICTs as they impose new conditions and cultural patterns as a form of imperialism.

So what can be done about the situation? 

It may be that inequality, individualist isolation, cultural damage and economic dependency that result from the global capitalist system could be reversed by abandoning the system and creating an alternative.  In the absence of such a revolutionary change, one strategy may be to find the cracks in the system where it is possible to operate on an alternative set of values--social solidarity, collective action and diversity in cultural development and practices. 

Critical pedagogy and alternative tools

People acting together can build alternatives.  Critical pedagogy in relation to information and communications technology has to make visible to teachers and students the submerged structures  and the implicit social and political meaning embedded within the technology.   Having alternative ways of seeing patterns is an important aspect of critical understanding and creation of alternative products.

In the area of information and communications technology in education, some concrete possibilities include:

Develop teaching resources and approaches that encourage a critical examination by teachers and students of the power relations that are implicit in the technology--its design, patterns of ownership and implicit social relations;

Use open source, free software instead of software produced by Microsoft and other commercial products;

Use online, open journals with free access for publication of research and commentary, rather than academic journals that are in hard copy, produced in the north and with closed editorial control;

Create online textbooks that incorporate appropriate values and perspectives and use these in place of commercially produced textbooks;

Organize groups of teachers working collaboratively to produce teaching materials that are made available electronically;

Maintain an accessible database of free teaching materials developed and shared by teachers.

Even if these are not widely adopted, the existence of alternatives sends an important message that the major global, corporate businesses that have identified Latin America as their new market opportunity (such as the Pearson Corporation, Apple or Microsoft) are not the only approach to utilize information and communications technology in education.

Administration and testing drive technology in education

FECODE, the teachers’ union in Colombia, sponsored six seminars in different cities in Colombia in November 2013, where they asked me to talk about technology, education and critical pedagogy.  Participants in the seminar wrote out questions for discussion following my presentations.  When question time ran out, I agreed to respond to the other questions in writing.  I have combined questions into some specific themes, with this being the second of three.

Will the introduction of new technologies replace and reduce the number of teachers?

It is the dream of some policy-makers to replace teachers with computers.  They may think that pre-programmed computers can replace teachers.  Or they may think that online learning will allow a teacher to teach many more students than in a face-to-face classroom. 

While programmed learning may be effective for some skills, a rich educational experience for children and youth still requires human interaction, even if it is communication through ICT.  Even for adults, the experience of mass education through MOOCs, a current form of applying technology to education for adults.  MOOCs are Massive Online Open Courses that can have tens of thousands of people signed up, but few who finish the course.  For many students as well as adults, the promise of cheaper mass education has not been fulfilled. 

Little comparative research has been done on the efficacy of online learning using the most current technologies--and the technology and programs change so fast that it is difficult to do this kind of research beyond anecdotes of how students and teachers feel about specific experiences.

The reality of computer use in education is that the "essential" uses are turning out to be administrative and for student testing, not for the learning process.  The new core curriculum in the United States is designed to have students taking tests online, so computers have to be provided to the students.  One school district alone, that of Los Angeles in California, is spending $1 billion to provide a tablet for every student.  These large expenditures are being  duplicated in many other places, as well. 

Education is seen by venture capital as having the potential for future profits.  Finding ways of privatizing education and making profits is a major motive for much of the investment in the creation of new education technology uses.

Addressing technology inequalities and gaps

FECODE, the teachers’ union in Colombia, sponsored six seminars in different cities in Colombia in November 2013, where they asked me to talk about technology, education and critical pedagogy.  Participants in the seminar wrote out questions for discussion following my presentations.  When question time ran out, I agreed to respond to the other questions in writing.  I have combined questions into some specific themes, with this being the first of three.

New information and communications technologies (ICT) have the effect of increasing already existing social and educational gaps.  What can be done about these inequalities and gaps?

Several types of gaps were identified in different questions:  social class differences between students who have access to ICTs and those who do not; gaps in access between students who live in the cities and those in rural areas where they are without any access to the technology;  differences between teachers and students.

Some teachers oppose any introduction of the new technologies into classrooms.  Many good reasons exist for being critical and skeptical about positive impact on education.

 

What, if any, are effective uses of the technology in learning? What is the impact on health as students spend time on the screen rather than in physical activity? What is the impact of individualist rather than collective relationships?

Despite these  legitimate questions, we cannot stop the inclusion of ICTs in education.  Nor should we.  They are too attractive and are getting more and more a part of the lived social experience of many of our students.  We cannot go back, but we must influence the direction forward if new technologies in education are not to increase already existing social inequities.

Social inequality is increased

Research evidence from the OECD PISA exam results shows that the most effective use of the technology is learned not in the classroom, but by students with access to the technology at home.  These students have more comfort with the technology than students who only have access at school. 

The equity issues in technology can only be effectively addressed by creating  more equity in society as a whole.  However, the reality is that in countries of both the north and the south, societies are becoming more unequal.  Equity in access to the technology is a part of the larger social problem of inequality.  Some steps can be taken, though, to make improvements by policies that give preference to the poor in social investments in technology. 

Special attention has to be given to students in rural areas if they are to have access to the technology.  As an example of what is possible, in Cuba schools that do not have electricity are set up with solar panels to produce the electricity needed for technology.  Again, equity demands that preference be given to providing access to those who are marginalized.

Generational gaps

A generational gap is recognized across societies.  A common mistake that many governments have made is to give the technology to students, but not the teachers.  It should not take any more than common sense to know that if you want teachers to integrate technology into their teaching practice, you give computers to teachers and encourage them to use them to assist in their teaching.  Instead, governments follow policies like giving tablets to students, but loans to teachers to buy their own computers.

The technology is attractive to many students and they may feel more comfortable using them.  However, the experience reported from many of the experiences is that the students use them to play games, watch movies and gossip with other students.

Critical pedagogies and ICTs

Even where teachers and students all have access to ICTs, effective use in the educational process is still very much a work in progress.  Many of the uses in education are based on individualist notions of "personalization" and  pre-programmed "assistive technologies."  Uses of technology have built in values, usually invisible and unexamined, that become an influence in the construction of values in our students.

A central role for critical pedagogy is to have teachers working together to develop pedagogical approaches based on socio-cultural, critical theories such as from Vygotsky's work, in contrast to the dominant individualist pedagogies.

  

Pedagogical circles of teachers doing collective, reflective research on their practice could be one method of teacher development of critical pedagogies in teaching with ICTs.

Is there a choice beyond the iPad for schools?

The iPad costs more than other tablets, but it is still dominant in sales to schools.  Despite austerity school district budgets, according to Education Week, an education publication, Apple has 94% of the tablet market for K-12 schools in the U.S.

But competitors have hope,  the article suggests:  "Apple's king-of-the-hill position in tablets is being eroded by various players--most recently by Google, with..Google Play for Education."  Google sells education apps using a system that "allows teachers to pay using a purchase order loaded on the tablet."

Many districts make their decisions before they have determined what the educational use will be--as with many technology decisions.  One big push for one-to-one computing in many states is the adoption of the Common Core Curriculum and computer-based testing that is going with it.

The Los Angeles school district has been front and centre for the problems of inadequate research and thought before making a purchase.  The district announced it was buying an iPad for all it students, but has had to back pedal as problems arose.

Computer-based testing was one of the key arguments for a one-to-one purchase.  However, they didn't buy keyboards to go with the iPads and students taking the tests on iPads would be disadvantaged compared to those using laptops or desktops.  The virtual keyboard would cover part of the screen with some of the test material.

The iPads were supposed to block students from exploring the Internet, except for pre-selected sites.  Students, of course, almost immediately found ways around that.  And the district didn't figure in all the overhead costs to the system either.

The range of tablets competing with the iPad, of course, includes Windows-based tablets from several other computer companies.

A note at the end of the Edweek article about alternatives to the iPad says "Coverage of the education industry and K-12 innovation is supported in part by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation."  

In case you might think that promoting options to iPad was the reason for the article being published, the note also says "Education Week retains sole editorial control over the content of this coverage."

What went wrong with iPads in LA?

The most publicized mass application of ICT hardware and software in K-12 education was the decision of the Los Angeles Unified School District to provide iPads to all students.   After distributing some of the iPads, the problems started. 

The machines were supposed to be limited to specific educational sites, not access to the full internet.  Part of the nearly $700 plus cost of each machine went to the Pearson corporation that supplied educational software for the iPads.  Almost immediately, some students figured out how to disable the block to the internet.

The rationale for every student getting an iPad was to be able to take the new online standardized tests that go with the new Common Curriculum.  However, it was realized that students using the iPad would have a disadvantage compared to students using laptops or desktop machines.  Those students would be able to see a full screen of information, but those on the iPad would not.  The onscreen keyboard of the iPad would get in the way of a part of the screen and the school district had not included keyboards.

Here is some of Larry Cuban's report of the problems:

 The true cost of this experiment runs far higher than the projected $400 million to give iPads to 655,000 students. That is what Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) means. The cost for the iPad is given as $678 per unit (remember, there is no keyboard usually listed at $100 which will have to be bought eventually for secondary school students).Now, budget-watchers discovered that the devices will cost even more. An Oops! that surprised the Board of Education.

Funds to hire school technical assistants, providing the wireless infrastructure, loss of tablets, and repair of broken tablets, insurance, professional development for teachers, costs for replacement devices when three-year warranties expire—I could go on but these numbers double and triple the published hardware and software costs. Consider that the reports of the $30 million contract with Apple Inc. omitted that the Board of Education approved $50 million for this first phase to accommodate some of these other costs detailed above.

And just a few days ago, a major Oops! was announced when the Board of Education, in questioning a top administrator, discovered that the software license to use the math and English curriculum expires after three years—the clock began ticking last July when the Board approved the contract. Renewal of the license in just over two years will cost another $60 million. Add that to the TCO.

Cuban's blog post is at http://larrycuban.wordpress.com/2013/12/06/a-second-look-at-ipads-in-los-angeles/

A Bloomburg media report called "iPad goes to school" quoted this LA student complaint:

Josh Hoover, a 16-year-old at Westchester High, misses his iPad and is still puzzled by the fuss. Standing outside the school in early October, he said he sympathizes with his industrious peers. "They should let us use Facebook," Hoover said. "There's nothing to do on it besides academics. They just want it to be a big old book.”