Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Exclusive: Pearson Foundation Responds to NYT articles on Parents' Coalition blog

The Parents' Coalition blog received the comment shown below from Mark Nieker, the President/CEO of The Pearson Foundation. 

The Pearson Foundation has recently been the subject of two New York Times (NYT) articles by education reporter Mike Winerip on the funding of international trips for state school superintendents. 
The NYT articles are here and here. 
An Iowa Gazette article followed up on the NYT investigation and reported on the filing of an ethics complaint regarding participation in one of these trips by an Iowa education official.
In response to the posting of the Iowa Gazette article on this blog, we received the comment below from Mr. Nieker of The Pearson Foundation. 
Mr. Nieker's comment links to The Pearson Foundation Press Release responding to the two NYT articles.

Mark Nieker said...
This is so disappointing. As the Foundation has said over and over, we categorically refute any suggestion that our relationship with CCSSO is improper, or intended to promote sales for Pearson, the commercial company. Have you seen the positive results of the Summits? See here and here. Check out CCSSO’s reports, review the critical lessons learned during the meetings, and judge for yourself.
Posted by at

1 comment:

  1. Janis SartucciOctober 13, 2011 at 10:22 AM

    Mr. Nieker,

    No, we haven't seen the positive results of summits or other Pearson Foundation paid for travel. Has our current or PAST superintendent been on any of these trips so that we could benefit?

    Let's start with recently resigned Superintendent Jerry Weast. Has Mr. Weast ever been on a trip that was paid for by the Pearson Foundation? Easy question. But will you answer it?

    If the trip(s) was(were) beneficial, why haven't we heard about it? Why wasn't there a report to our Board of Education on this (these) trips?

    In the interest of transparency, here's how much our school system, MCPS, has been spending on Pearson Education products over the last 3 years:

    FY 2010
    Pearson Education Inc $1,039,217
    Pearson Learning Group 33,984

    FY 2011
    Pearson Education Inc $ 774,702

    Partial FY 2012
    Pearson Education Inc $ 250,546

    Now tell us how many trips our past superintendent took that were paid for by The Pearson Foundation. Nothing to hide about this, correct?

    Thanks.

    ReplyDelete

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