The Price of a Human Life

The College Board, through its alter ego the Educational Testing Service (ETS), is soliciting teachers to sign up for a trial program in which teachers can serve on an advisory panel that will help them develop a testing platform, "a suite of tools," "that will measure student learning." Oh, and for signing up, teachers agree to have their classes undergo field testing in the Spring.

I will share the email text below.

For this invaluable help, the ETS will pay the school, NOT the teacher but the school, five dollars for every completed test.

Sorry, I should have warned you to put your drink down. Sorry I can't help you clean up the liquid you just spewed on your floor.

Five bucks. Five dollars. It puts me in mind of the scene from the second Harry Potter movie when Lucius Malfoy asks Arthur Weasley what's the point in being a disgrace to the name of wizard if he's not being well paid for it.

Indeed. Why would I sell out my students (I wouldn't do it for any price), but ETS is not going to pay well for it. Data mining on the cheap. AND they don't offer to pay me, but they will give a measly five bucks to my school.

If I was tempted, I would tell them my students are worth far more than that. Should we open negotiations at $500,000 per completed field test?

You're right, not enough.

ETS, let's start at five million, but I expect more.

What is the price of a human life? What price can we put on human data?

What ETS offers wouldn't buy even a Big Mac anymore. Nope, can't stomach it, will not cooperate with a corporation that wants a human life for less than the cost of a hamburger.

Here's the email text:

ETS is seeking teachers to participate in an online survey panel which will aid in the development of assessment tools that can be used in your classroom. Your input will help us to develop the product to be responsive to the needs of today’s students and educators.  Over the next two years, we will also be conducting a variety of activities and studies that will allow us to collect feedback on our items, systems, and products.  In thanks for your participation, we will provide you with a giftcertificate.com gift card for each survey and/or activity you complete.We are in the process of developing a new suite of tools, including Summative, Benchmark/Interim, and formative components to be used within the classroom, to measure student’s knowledge, skills and abilities in mathematics and English language arts, from elementary to high school grades. This new product from ETS, called the Winsight™ Assessment System, will be a unified, configurable system that harnesses the strength of ETS research, providing insight into where students are and where they need to be-- and enabling educators to create a pathway to get them there.Winsight is flexibly designed for your state’s standards and ETS Learning Progressions and integrates the state summative, interim and formative assessments into one inter-connected assessment system that requires less summative testing time, by measuring what is truly important, and makes learning deeper and more transparent. Winsight will deliver more actionable information to guide instructional strategies thereby creating a richer environment for teaching and learning and leading to improved outcomes for your students.In addition to the online survey panels, we will be conducting a field test this spring to test items and the end-to-end delivery system.  These field tests are being conducted across the country, with students in Grades 3-10.  In appreciation for the work, your school will receive a $5 honorarium for every completed test, as well as information on student’s performance and professional development materials that explore how students’ conceptual understanding develops in key areas of mathematics and English language arts.If you would like to take advantage of any of these opportunities, please fill out our survey by clicking the survey link below:Survey LinkThank you for your consideration. We look forward to your response!The ETS Winsight Team