From a friend and peer on #Pearson

From the old Facebook feed:

On a creepy note: word from a colleague that the Assoc. Dean for Research was heard to say: ‘We need to repair our relationship with Pearson.’
Serious?
Question: what relationship?

This comment was stated with regard, most likely, to linkages between colleges of education and the publishing giant Pearson that is currently working with higher education and state departments of education across the nation to mandate the Teacher Performance Assessment. Again, if the TPA was so good, why mandate it? Let the market vet this thing and see if it survives.

In any event, colleges of education will outsource scoring of the TPA to Pearson at a cost of a couple hundred bucks a pop, maybe more. Actually, Pearson lists the qualifications to score the TPA, which, um, yeah, don’t require too much. Also interesting are Pearson’s break time policies for scorers:

If you do not live in one of the aforementioned states, follow the standard Pearson break and meal period policy below:

• One 15-minute paid break for every work segment that lasts at least four consecutive hours.
• You will need to add your paid break time to your timesheet, and note in the comments section the additional time is for a paid break.
• If you anticipate working longer than 7 hours, you must schedule an unpaid 30-minute meal break near the middle of your shift.
• You must be logged out of ePEN when taking break time.

For example, if you are scheduled to work 8 hours, you would plan to take a paid 15-minute break near the middle of the first four-hour segment, and near the middle of the second four-hour segment. In addition, you would schedule an unpaid 30-minute meal period near the middle of the 8-hour shift.

Wow, sounds like a real awesome job there. But this will cost students or colleges of education roughly $300 to score each assessment. Apparently, and this I cannot confirm, but some colleges will have a “choice” to outsource to Pearson or not. I think that’s nonsense, who has ever been given a choice?

But here’s a question: why not actually pay the faculty to grade them if that’s what they want to do? Just a thought. Meh, this whole thing is a mess. And all this time, we’re sitting around and waiting to see if this is even a viable measure of teacher performance, data for which is not being released until this summer. So, this could be all for naught. Probably will be.