Pearson’s Chief Financial Officer, Robin Freestone said in a media statement that in 2013 “We’re not going to get a significant boost from Common core” and “that won’t come in 2013 and so that headwind will remain in our school business”. Not only is it concerning that in fact, their market value hit its high in the past 12 years and has been steadily increasing with Common Core implementation, but it’s the implications of this “school business”.

Have we forgotten what education is? Education is not a business to be run. It’s a process of informing human beings on how to contribute to society. A system formed on the principles of arbitrary testing cannot stand. It’s not true education. But let us forget the business and politics for a moment and examine the actual tests.

It’s a process of informing human beings on how to contribute to society.

We look towards PARCC assessments. Specifically called the “Partnership for Assessment of Readiness of College and Careers.” These nationalized tests that have been paired with Common Core are said to have one goal: “success in college and the workplace”. The problems presented on these tests, however, are of justification with no merit, a learning system inherently flawed. These tests are not fair assessments of student’s knowledge. If you look towards the mathematics section of the PARCC website, we see that it “calls for written arguments/justifications, critique of reasoning, or precision in mathematical statements”. As a student who has scored 5s on AP Calculus, AP Statistics, and is preparing to take Calculus 3 at a local college next semester, I can honestly tell you that I cannot answer and justify your First grade Pearson math test question “What is a related Subtraction sentence?”