...on the CEP news conference

[Sue Allison <sueallison@comcast.net>]

Just thought of another interesting tidbit from the CEP news conference on NCLB.   Naomi Chudowsky was up talking about the 3-8 assessments, mentioning that a lot of states were having to abandon their assessments that may have been working quite well, in favor of off-the-shelf assessments that were being modified here and there to meet the state alignment criteria.  A reporter then asked a very pointed question - who are these people who are writing these tests - can you tell us about them?   This brought a bit of a giggle from Naomi.  She said that all of the states basically go to 6 major corporate test publishers, CTB McGraw Hill, Harcourt, Riverside, etc..   Thought it was an interesting question.  Maybe the mainstream media will start to look into the revenue streams associated with the law.