Corporatizing Testing

Valerie Strauss begins a recent commentary in the Washington Post’s “Answer Sheet” (April 20, 2013) this way: “Talk about corporate-based school reform. New high-stakes standardized tests aligned with the Common Core State Standards are featuring plugs for commercial products.” Then, in the very next sentence, she undermines her own argument by saying, “And the companies didn’t have to pay a penny.”

It would be different—and far more damning—if Pearson were making money à la Hollywood movies by charging for product placement, or what is also called embedded marketing. Ever wonder why your favorite movie star is drinking Pepsi instead of Coca-Cola? It’s because Pepsi paid for the product placement, not Coca-Cola.

Companies are not paying Pearson, according to Strauss. Therefore, Pearson’s claim that the tests merely use authentic text, brand names and all, is accurate—to a point. They are being slightly disingenuous, however, if we are meant to believe that brand-name mentions are wholly unavoidable.

In fact, Pearson is following a long history of creeping commercialism in public schools. Once upon a time, school boards, parents, and educators fretted over allowing certain commercial products into the public schools. Vending machines initially were resisted as much on grounds that their placement implied acceptance and promotion of the products they sold as over the issue that the products were void of nutritional value. The machines were widely adopted anyway, and next some cafeteria foods, particularly at high school and college levels, were outsourced to brand-name companies, such as Pizza Hut.

Readers may remember some of the controversy surrounding the launch in 1990 of Chris Whittle’s Channel One, which broadcasts specially prepared television news in middle and high schools. Whittle’s enterprise provides the TVs—and the commercials. While critics decry Channel One for “forcing” students to watch ads, supporters argue that the ads keep the programs running and pay for the TV leases.

There should be little doubt in anyone’s mind that brand-name product placement and “embedded” advertising in public schools implies endorsement of the goods and services on offer. Conspiracy theorists might argue that commercialization is a slippery slope toward even more sinister forms of corporatization of public education, such as the siphoning off of public monies to support vouchers for private schools and the selling off of “failing” public schools to corporations that promise but often don’t deliver a turnaround.

The conspiracy theorists might even be right.