Why Doesn't The Daily News See Pearson Problems With The Common Core Tests Too?

So the Daily News gets a lot right with this editorial on Pearson and their G&T test screw-ups:

Herewith a question that could well appear on the tough new Common Core standardized exams, developed by the giant testing company Pearson and administered to the city’s school children:

You are chancellor of an education department that insists on admitting 4-year-olds to gifted-and-talented programs by testing them and offering spots in strict rank order of their scores, using a formula that takes into account their birth dates.

You are the chancellor of an education department that also hires Pearson to apply the formula, which is impossible to explain to anyone who hasn’t aced a grad school-level statistics course.

Your education department also knows that Pearson has messed up administering and grading exams across the country.

Pearson reports the G & T scores, only to have parents figure out that the company got them wrong for thousands of kids. You promise stern action. Pearson scores the test again. A parent questions the results and, again, Pearson is forced to admit that its geniuses got them wrong.

Who is dumber:

A) Pearson

B) You

C) It’s a tie

Explain your answer.

Here's the problem with this DN editorial:

 

They get that Pearson is a screw-up of a company that cannot be trusted to handle the high stakes on the G&T tests, but they don't apply the same logic to the Pearson-developed Common Core tests.

 

If Pearson screwed up the G&T tests twice even after assuring that they had performed quality control after the first round of screw-ups, what makes the Daily News editors think they haven't screwed up the Common Core tests as well.

 

Sure, Pearson assures us they haven't.

 

But they assured us after the first round of G&T errors as well that they had fixed the problem.

 

But they hadn't.

 

Now the Common Core tests are secret and any teacher who reveals the contents is under threat of losing her/his job.

 

The DN did get its hands on one exam and claims that after scrutinizing it, the exam holds up.

 

But that's not a good enough quality assurance for parents and teachers all across the state.

 

We need to know what all the tests, 3rd-8th grade, in both math and ELA look like and we need to know what the scoring rubric looks like as well.

 

It's not as if we don't have ample proof that Pearson is a company of incompetents.

 

The G&T and Hare and Pineapple fiascos are the ample proof of that.

 

So while I appreciate the DN coming down hard on Pearson and the city for the G&T debacle, I don't understand why they don't come down hard on Pearson and the state for the Common Core tests as well.

So long as they are kept secret, we cannot know if Pearson's "quality control assurance" is as good as the one they issued over the G&T tests.