Pearson Education, part of Pearson PLC, one of the world’s largest education companies, bet big on Common Core testing as well as textbooks and other materials tailored to boost scores on Common Core tests. Right now, the British company is in a bit of trouble.
The stock price for Pearson PLC, the world’s largest education business, dropped precipitously Friday after its announcement of a 7 percent decline in underlying sales to about $2.5 billion for the first half of 2016.
Reuters reported that the company’s shares were the biggest losers on Britain’s Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 for the day. Analysts were disappointed that the decline was 2 percent larger than had been anticipated.
Another article hints at the reason for the company’s revenue loss.
Political and economic problems have combined to derail the group’s plans to sell text books and mark exams in the United States, and the group blamed a drop in revenue from exam marking in the U.S. and Britain, its top two markets, for its disappointing first-half performance.
I don’t know much about the situation in Britain, but it’s pretty clear what’s happened on this side of the pond. With education funding just beginning to recover from the 2009 downturn, it’s harder to get schools to buy stuff. More important, Pearson was supposed to be one of the major beneficiaries of Common Core spending. It expected to dominate the market with its high stakes tests, along with educational materials schools would purchase by the truckload to help students boost their scores. But it got pummeled by the double-whammy uproar over Common Core from the right and the left. States have pulled out of what was supposed to be a nationwide common set of standards, and many of them decided to go with other tests from other sources. It looked like a sure thing, but it’s looking more and more like Pearson bet on the wrong pony.
This article appears in Jul 28 – Aug 3, 2016.
Gee, David, no comments on this piece – unusual for one of your blogs. With all the fascinating LOCAL news relating to standardized testing and the management of public school districts, perhaps Supporters of Public Ed in Tucson, while they find this British testing company’s stock prices and Common Core adoptions in the US interesting, would find one of the following topics more relevant to their lives:
–HT Sanchez’s position on Common Core and / or what TUSD’s testing policies have been in the local district serving almost 50,000 students since Sanchez came to town.
–how TUSD won an award from the College Board and some have alleged that this was done not by increasing access to AP coursework district wide, but by increasing the # of mandatory AP courses the gifted kids they corral at University High School are forced to take. You could do some public records requests and score analysis and find out for us what the truth is.
–how Arizona law was recently changed to allow the application of undesignated public school tax credit funds to pay fees for standardized testing. These tax credits were originally established to allow public schools to repair some of the damage done to extracurriculars and fine arts when the funding supporting them was cut. Who was behind that change to the legislation and how is it being used in our local public schools? Which extracurriculars and fine arts are losing funding and what forms of standardized testing are gaining it? Which testing companies are benefiting?
You see, there are a lot of ways to apply your interests in standardized testing and public school test adoptions and policies to matters of LOCAL interest. You could do a tremendous service empowering Southern Arizona residents to be informed advocates of humane policies and the application of the limited public funds available here in support of improved education for students, not proved profit margins for testing companies and improved (and misleading) stats for administrators to put on their resumes.
Why don’t you do it?