Inside the Ownership Society

Publishing giant Pearson favors Obama over McCain. How come?

Pearson CEO, Dame Marjorie Scardino is critical of the Republicans for not properly funding NCLB. She thinks the Dems will spend more on education and hopes Pearson will get a bigger share than they did under Bush/Spellings. She might be right. British-owned Pearson’s education arm sells textbooks and digital-learning programs to students in America and beyond, which account for nearly two-thirds of the group's profits. Pearson also owns the Financial Times.

Under pet programs NCLB and Reading First, Bush favorite McGraw-Hill had a near monopoly on textbook sales, edging out competitors Pearson and Houghton Mifflin with it’s Open Court reading script. Harold McGraw is a long-time family friend of the Bush’s and is a Bush golfing buddy. That’s all paid off to the tune of $2.7 billion in profits in 2007.

But with the massive shift to war spending and accompanying deep cuts in the education budget, McGraw’s overall business has suffered, opening the way for giant competitor Pearson to make its move, hoping that an Obama victory in November will bring about a shift in DOE contracting.

McCain vs. Obama on ed issues

Well, the lines are now being pretty clearly drawn between the two candidates.

McCain supports school vouchers; Obama opposes them. McCain opposes affirmative-action programs; Obama is generally in favor. McCain favors government-funded, private alternative certification programs, like TFA for new teachers; Obama leans towards expanded teacher-residency programs, which help bolster field experiences for prospective educators while allowing them to earn certification from a university program. And on it goes, pretty much as you would expect, important differences between progressive and conservative candidates. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.

The debate has stirred some surprising responses though. Some ed conservatives, like Fordham’s Mike Petrilli, are openly critical of McCain for wanting to continue the DOE’s expansion, control and monitoring of tutoring programs. Petrilli has been getting into it lately with his boss Finn at Fordham. Maybe he’s been in touch with Diane Ravitch.

“I don’t see how the federal government could possibly have the capacity to do this well,” said Mr. Petrilli, a vice president of the Washington-based Thomas B. Fordham Foundation. “You’d have to double the size of the Department of Education.”

To me, the most interesting position comes from the liberal Education Trust, which has been a faithful supporter of Bush and the neo-cons on NCLB and it’s focus on high-stakes testing. Now the Trust, looking at a likely shift in management at the DOE, claims to support “both approaches:”

Both candidates’ plans share a goal of getting more effective educators into the classroom, particularly to help poor and minority students, said Heather Peske, the director of teacher quality at the Education Trust, a Washington-based research and advocacy organization. She said both approaches could be promising, if administered correctly.

Is that what’s meant by hedging your bets?

Boys, boys...

Fordham think-tanker Liam Julian takes umbrage at Russo’s umbrage. It seems, Russo got pissed because Flypaper didn’t give Russo’s blog “first dibs,” on the NYT Magazine story on integration. I feel Julian’s pain on that one. No reason to cite Russo, we can all read the Times.

But all I can say is: boys, boys, stop your prissyness, kiss and make up. After all, when it comes to issues of racial and class equity and fairness, you’re both on the same side.

Fordham’s Julian and Finn think the struggle for equality (Finn calls it “race mixing”) ended 40 years ago and Julian refers to it as “social engineering” (how original). Russo has always argued that school reform has nothing to do with diversity. So you're agreed. Right?

And boys, remember, neither of your blogs are all that. So behave.