This Is Prison

Another Pearson-written test shores up controversy

To many teachers across the state, the idea of being forced to administer a Pearson-written test is prison enough.

But even the biggest critics of the worldwide education conglomerate may not have foreseen how it would be at the center of two former New Mexico Corrections Department employees' whistleblower violation lawsuits against the state last week.

Catherine Johnson and Joseph Fasanella had been working at Corrections for a combined total of 37 years before they got fired. In separate District Court lawsuits, the pair says they lost their jobs after raising concerns about Pearson VUE, a subsidiary of the London-based education corporation, and its takeover of the General Educational Development test in New Mexico.

Fasanella got his job back after an arbitrator ruled in his favor, but when Johnson got a favorable ruling from an arbitrator, she didn't regain her original job as the department's manager of the Adult Basic Education Program.

The GED, which offers the equivalent of a high school diploma for adults without a high school education, came under Pearson's control in 2011, when the corporation acquired GED Testing Service, which effectively gave Pearson a monopoly on administering the GED test here.

Now the test would cost twice as much and have to be taken on computers.

In the lawsuits, both plaintiffs say they questioned the test's rising costs to their department. Both claim that's why their boss, then-Director of Recidivism Reduction David Huerta, fired them.

Yet what Johnson and Fasanella feared apparently came to fruition. The number of inmates who took the GED in New Mexico dropped from 410 in 2013 to 160 for all of 2014 and the first two months of this year, according to Corrections Department spokeswoman Alex Tomlin.

Tomlin wouldn't talk about what she called "personnel matters" raised in the lawsuit, but she says that the biggest hurdle during the transition to Pearson is that, just like the controversial PARCC exam, it relies completely on computers. That's a problem, she says, because many prisoners come to the slammer with little digital literacy.

"Now we're trying to make sure inmates have the ability to understand the computer system," Tomlin says.

Prisoners weren't the only ones hurt by the transition. Speaking during the recent state legislative session, the director of basic adult education for San Juan College in Farmington testified that the number of GED test-takers dropped from 1,724 during the first six months of 2013 to 347 during the same time period in 2014. Similarly, Hobbs-based New Mexico Junior College's dean in charge of GED testing reported a 72 percent decline in test-taking since 2013.

The two colleges also reported a 32 percent and 92 percent decrease in students passing the GED test, respectively. It's a trend that both plaintiffs stress also happened in the Corrections Department.

Their lawsuits also attribute the overall drop in people taking the exam to its rising costs. Before Pearson began administering the test, the GED cost students roughly $65 to take.

"Beginning in January 2014, the cost would be $120 for the first two years and then, according to Pearson VUE, the cost would rise to perhaps twice that," reads the lawsuit from Fasanella.

Johnson, according to her lawsuit, raised concerns that Pearson's takeover of the test was a waste of money that could have violated the state procurement code.

Her lawsuit also cites Huerta's "personal friendship" with First Gentleman Charles "Chuck" Franco and insinuates that their relationship as hunting buddies influenced the department's GED process. State Education Secretary Hanna Skandera, an appointee of Gov. Susana Martinez, has come under scrutiny for her perceived coziness with Pearson.

Tomlin says that the Corrections Department had no choice once Pearson got the green light to run the GED. She says that her department has "zero knowledge" of any inappropriate activities conducted by Huerta, who left his post there in June of 2014.

"We went with Pearson VUE because they were the only company that provided GED testing," she says.

Since then, the state passed a law allowing schools to substitute the GED with a "high school equivalency exam," effectively getting beyond Pearson's control of the test.

Now the Corrections Department has the option to look at other providers, and Tomlin says the new Recidivism Reduction Bureau chief Micaela Cadena is looking at options. But for now, the department is using Pearson.

Ellen Hur, a spokeswoman for the Public Education Department, tells SFR Pearson's administration of the GED test is out of the state's jurisdiction.

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