Protesting Pearson's latest move on teacher licensing

Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York Times

Barbara Madeloni, front right, who runs the high school teacher training program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, with some of her students, who have refused to participate in a pilot program for a new licensing procedure being developed by the education company Pearson and Stanford University to be marketed to states nationwide.

“This is something complex and we don’t like seeing it taken out of human hands,” said Barbara Madeloni, who runs the university’s high school teacher training program. “We are putting a stick in the gears.”  -- NY Times

Education students are refusing to send Pearson two 10-minute videos of themselves teaching, as well as a 40-page take-home test, requirements of an assessment that will soon be necessary for licensure in several states. UMass students say that their professors and the classroom teachers who observe them for six months in real school settings can do a better job judging their skills than a corporation that has never seen them.

Sixty-seven of the 68 students studying to be teachers at the middle and high school levels at the Amherst campus are protesting a new national licensure procedure being developed by Stanford University with the education company Pearson. Pearson advertises that it is paying scorers $75 per assessment, with work “available seven days a week” for current or retired licensed teachers or administrators.