New Jersey

Matt Steinmetz is the publisher and brand director of Publishing Executive.

Pearson, which only got into the U.S. testing business about 15 years ago, has quickly become a giant in the rapidly expanding world of standardized testing. It has also become a target for critics unhappy with the growing presence of for-profit companies in public education.

There have been questions about Pearson's spending as it has worked to expand its testing business. In 2013, the company's charitable arm agreed to pay $7.7 million in fines after New York's attorney general said the charity sent state education officials on overseas junkets

Pearson, the world's largest education company, is monitoring social media during the administration of the new PARCC Common Core test to detect any security breaches, and a spokeswoman said that it was "obligated" to alert authorities when any problems were discovered.

The superintendent of a New Jersey school district wrote an e-mail to colleagues (see below) about the monitoring, saying that she found the practice "a bit disturbing."

March 2 is Dr. Seuss's birthday, or, rather, the day 111 years ago when Theodor Seuss Geisel, the famous children's author, was born, and for years, thousands of schools around the country have celebrated the day with book readings ("Cat in the Hat, "Green Eggs and Ham," etc.) and Seuss character costumes. This year, some of those celebrations have been changed. Why? It's the start of the spring 2015 testing season, and at many schools students will be taking PARCC Core standardized tests instead.


I spent eight years living “down the shore”—that’s a term many people from New Jersey and Southeastern Pennsylvania use when referring to the Jersey Shore. I lived two blocks from the beach in Ventnor, one of the best places I’ve ever lived. Even though I didn’t grow up in South Jersey I still consider it [...]

The post Why even fiction authors should get their facts right (We’re looking at you, Jennifer Close) appeared first on TeleRead: News and views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics.

With more than 20 schools in New York City unable to reopen and dozens of schools in New Jersey still closed in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, Scholastic, the global children’s publishing, education and media company, today announced that it will donate one million books to schools and libraries in the hardest-hit areas of the tri-state region.  To help in the recovery efforts with support for the educators, families and students who have suffered losses, Scholastic is accepting book grant requests at www.scholastic.com/bookgrants and will provide new books and resources that will help get tens of thousands of students reading and learning again, despite severely challenging circumstances. Scholastic is grateful to be working with the nonprofit Kids in Distressed Situations, Inc., to help distribute the million books to the schools and libraries that need them the most.

More Blogs