Diane Ravitch: How Pearson Cheats on State Tests

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Is same thing happening in Kentucky????

Well-known education historian Diane Ravitch just got a heads up about a potential testing problem in New York’s new Common Core State Standards aligned tests.

Writes Ravitch:

“A teacher in upstate New York wrote me to say that the state English language arts test for 8th grade (written by Pearson) contained a passage that his students had read a week earlier—in a Pearson 8th grade textbook! The story is “Why Leaves Turn Color in Fall,” by Diane Ackerman.”

Wow! Talk about a neat marketing ploy. Buy our textbooks and your kids will already know what is on the state tests!

Clearly, this raises concerns for the validity and honesty in New York’s tests.

But, don’t relax, Kentucky. Guess which test publisher does our K-PREP grade 3 to 8 tests. It’s Pearson!

I wonder if any Kentucky teachers have spotted a similar problem here.

For that matter, since both New York and Kentucky are supposedly administering Common Core aligned tests, now, I wonder if the exact same question was used on our K-PREP tests.

Eighth grade teachers, what can you tell us?