On May 29, 2011 Greg Mild reported that the Superintendent of Ohio Schools works for the Educational Testing Service being paid to administer many of the new assessments being required under recent legislation. Here is a portion of that article:
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Interim Superintendent of Ohio Schools Works for ETS
Stan Heffner, Interim Superintendent for Ohio, provided testimony to the Senate expressly supporting a provision that would direct over 2.2 million dollars annually to ETS, the company that announced his hiring just three weeks earlier. He provided opinions that contradict previously published documents from the Ohio Department of Education. While it is true that he will not actually cast the votes to make this law, he has used his position as Superintendent to represent himself as an expert in this area. Nowhere in his testimony did he declare his existing financial relationship with ETS.
And this is not his only conflict of interest between ODE and ETS.
In the beginning stages of the development of the Common Core curriculum, Heffner clearly stated that Ohio wouldn’t participate. And yet his latest ODE Profile states that “Heffner is an innovative leader in the national effort to create model curricula and common assessments aligned to the national Common Core State Standards in English language arts and mathematics.”
Heffner has reversed course to the benefit his future (current) employer and has been collaborating with ETS’s newly formed department since as early as January when this “leader in the national effort” began promoting ETS as his primary source for information about the development of common assessments.
Continue Reading the Full Article:
Interim Superintendent of Ohio Schools Works for ETS
