[Open-education] [OER] Pearson Foundation / Pearson: in trouble

Sun Dec 15 15:21:16 UTC 2013

Thanks for the clarifications Cable. I am glad to hear that Creative
Commons does seek to work with educators everywhere, including those at
Pearson.

The $3M grant from Gates was given to Pearson Foundation to enable FOUR of
the 24 courses to be provided free. This set a cost basis for each course
at $750,000. So the $15M Pearson Education paid for the other 20 courses
was exactly correct. All 24 courses were not developed using Gates
Foundation funds. By the way, I know that Creative Commons has long
advocated that tax-funded resources should be open licensed; I agree with
this stand except to the extent that it encourages ever more government
interference with education. However, your message is the first I have
heard about CC advocating that Foundation-funded materials be
open-licensed. Foundations have an obligation to their funders and some
obligations to the public because of their tax-free status; open-licensing
their creations is a very long stretch of the latter obligation.

There is a much larger concern about the Pearson/Gates Common Core effort.
Bill Gates has said that Common Core is a standard, not a curriculum. Now,
Pearson and others are creating curricula. There is a reason, avoiding
federal government control of education, that a few states have had the
backbone to avoid Common Core. They did this at the cost of bypassing the
return of money they have sent to Washington, the carrot/stick that the
federal government often uses to curtail state and local control of
education and other aspects of society.

Thousands of individuals and dozens of organizations are mounting a strong
opposition to this assault on education freedom. See
http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2013-11-04/news/fl-nmcol-common-core-oped1104-20131104_1_common-core-standards-core-opponents

It is interesting that Susan Neuman, a former Education Department
official in the George W. Bush administration who is now a professor at
the University of Michigan, worries about Pearson dominating the
curricula:
“Pearson already dominates, and this could take it to the extreme,” she
said. “This could be problematic for many of our kids. We could get a one
size fits all.” Ms. Neuman is wrong; there are hundreds of individuals,
organizations, and companies developing Common Core resources. The
organization she should be concerned about is the federal government that
has no competitors and is the real advocate of one-size-fits-all.

Regards,
Jacky

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Re: [OER] [Open-education] Pearson Foundation / Pearson: in
trouble
From:    "Cable Green" <cable.green at gmail.com>
Date:    Sat, December 14, 2013 6:30 pm
To:      "Jacky Hood" <jacky.hood at opendoorsgroup.org>
         "Open Educational Resources - an online discussion forum"
<oer-forum at lists.esn.org.za>
Cc:      "OER Advocacy Coalition"
<oer-advocacy-coalition at googlegroups.com>
         "OPENEDSIG at JISCMAIL.AC.UK" <openedsig at jiscmail.ac.uk>
         "OER-DISCUSS at JISCMAIL.AC.UK" <oer-discuss at jiscmail.ac.uk>
"Educause Openness Constituent Group"
<openness at listserv.educause.edu>
         "Open Educaton @ OKFN" <open-education at lists.okfn.org>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Comments inline below.

Cable

On Sat, Dec 14, 2013 at 4:24 PM, Jacky Hood
<jacky.hood at opendoorsgroup.org>wrote:

> Cable's posting is very disturbing. The opening salvo is "The next time
Pearson comes after your good work, keep this in your back pocket."

By "come after" I do not mean: acquire, steal, collect, annex.

I mean: belittle, disparage, smear, deprecate...

I mean: the next time Pearson takes a swing at OER as being low quality,
poor quality - as costing tax payers more money, as being a waste of
time... it may be useful to remind them, in a public forum, that they are
not playing by the tax laws of the United States and their actions appear
to value profit over access to educational resources.

> Unless I am reading this incorrectly, the implication is that Pearson
Education has in the past and will in the future 'come after' (steal?)
the
> good work done by each and every member of six OER communities. Does
simply belonging to an OER community mean that a person produces good
work? If Pearson is indeed stealing people's work, then it should be
prosecuted, not simply reminded of a court decision of which it is
already
> well aware.

No - see above for clarification.

> Pearson appears to have made mistakes in keeping a wall between its
corporation and its foundation. It has paid dearly for those mistakes:
$7.5M in fines, $15M for the intellectual property, and its employees
forbidden to attend Pearson Foundation Conferences. To find joy in this
situation is lamentable.

No joy - just facts.

> I suggest that we reach out to Pearson Education employees and welcome
them at other education conferences. Recently I was privileged to serve
on
> a panel entitled "The Future of Digital Textbooks" with Jerome Grant,
Executive VP, Digital Products, Pearson Education. The conference was
sponsored by the National Association of College Auxiliary Services, an
organization whose members are taking a major hit due to the shift from
print to digital textbooks.

I have and continue to reach out to Pearson.  I am in regular contact with
many of their VPs... and I hold them privately and publicly to reasonable
standards of proper behavior that supports broad and affordable access to
learning resources.

These news stories reflect poor behavior on the part of Pearson and the
Pearson Foundation.

> Mr. Grant, who once served as an Editor-in-Chief for Higher Education
Mathematics and Statistics, said that Pearson would happily give away
ALL
> of its content if it could receive a per-student fee for tools. Imagine:
instead of 1/3 of the students buying textbooks for hundreds of dollars
and the rest trying to pass their courses with no materials, each
student
> would pay a single tool fee and have access to all content. This would
be
> a win-win for all concerned.

I am eager to see such a proposal - and then compare and contrast it with a
publicly funded OER solution.

> Open Doors Group and College Open Textbooks have always and will always
have a philosophy of 'no enemies, no victims'. Everyone who loves
education must work together to increase access to high quality content
and tools.

I completely agree.

Cable

> Regards,
> Jacky Hood
> Alliances Director
> Open Doors Group
> http://www.opendoorsgroup.org
> ---------------------------- Original Message
----------------------------
> Subject: Re: [OER] [Open-education] Pearson Foundation / Pearson: in
trouble
> From:    "Jacky Hood" <jacky.hood at opendoorsgroup.org>
> Date:    Sat, December 14, 2013 1:09 pm
> To:      "Educause Openness Constituent Group"
> <openness at listserv.educause.edu>
>          "OER Advocacy Coalition"
<oer-advocacy-coalition at googlegroups.com
>          "OER-DISCUSS at JISCMAIL.AC.UK" <oer-discuss at jiscmail.ac.uk> "OER
Forum" <oer-forum at lists.esn.org.za>
>          "Open Educaton @ OKFN" <open-education at lists.okfn.org>
>          "OPENEDSIG at JISCMAIL.AC.UK" <openedsig at jiscmail.ac.uk>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
Schadenfreude
> ---------------------------- Original Message
----------------------------
> Subject: [Open-education] Pearson Foundation / Pearson: in trouble From:
   "Cable Green" <cable at creativecommons.org>
> Date:    Sat, December 14, 2013 12:58 pm
> To:      "Educause Openness Constituent Group"
> <OPENNESS at listserv.educause.edu>
>          "OER Advocacy Coalition"
<oer-advocacy-coalition at googlegroups.com
>          "OER-DISCUSS at JISCMAIL.AC.UK" <OER-DISCUSS at jiscmail.ac.uk> "OER
Forum" <oer-forum at lists.esn.org.za>
>          "Open Educaton @ OKFN" <open-education at lists.okfn.org>
>          "OPENEDSIG at JISCMAIL.AC.UK" <OPENEDSIG at jiscmail.ac.uk>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Open Education Colleagues:
> The next time Pearson comes after your good work, keep this in your back
pocket.
>    - *Educational PublisherÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s Charity, Accused of Seeking
Profits, Will
> Pay
>    Millions NYT: *The Pearson Foundation will pay $7.7 million after the
New York State attorney general found that it had broken state law by
helping develop products for its corporate parent.
>       -
> http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2013/12/12/publishing-giant-pearsons-nonprofit-arm-settles-investigation/
>       - *Publishing Giant Pearson's Nonprofit Arm Settles Investigation*
>    *WSJ:*
>    -
> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/13/nyregion/educational-publishers-charity-accused-of-seeking-profits-will-pay-millions.html
This part of the story (in the NYTimes article) is especially troubling:
>    -
> *Around 2010, Pearson began financing an effort through its foundation
to
>    develop courses based on the Common Core. The attorney
generalÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s
> report
>    said Pearson had hoped to use its charity to win endorsements and
> donations
>    from a Ã¢â‚¬Å“prominent foundation.Ã¢â‚¬  That group appears to be
the Bill and
>    Melinda Gates Foundation. *
>    - *Ã¢â‚¬Å“Pearson Inc. executives believed that branding their
courses by
>    association with the prominent foundation would enhance
PearsonÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s
>    reputation with policy makers and the education community,Ã¢â‚¬  a
release
>    accompanying the attorney generalÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s report said. *
>    - * Indeed, in April 2011, the Pearson Foundation and the Gates
Foundation announced they would work together
>    <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/28/education/28gates.html> to create
24
> new
>    online reading and math courses aligned with the Common Core. * - *
Pearson executives believed the courses could later be sold
commercially, the report said, and predicted potential profits of
tens
> of
>    millions of dollars. After Mr. SchneidermanÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s office began its
investigation, the Pearson Foundation sold the courses to Pearson for
> $15.1
>    million.*
> Creative Commons consistently recommends that publicly funded (and
Foundation funded) resources be openly licensed. It's too bad these 24
reading and math courses, funded by two Foundations (and then sold to
Pearson for $15.1M), were not openly licensed and made available to the
millions of teachers and students who desperately need updated learning
resources.
> Cable
> --
> Cable Green, PhD
> Director of Global Learning
> Creative Commons
> @cgreen <http://twitter.com/cgreen>
> http://creativecommons.org/education
> * reuse, revise, remix & redistribute*
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-- 

Cable Green, PhD
Director of Global Learning
Creative Commons
@cgreen <http://twitter.com/cgreen>
http://creativecommons.org/education
* reuse, revise, remix & redistribute*