A gifted writer and New York eighth grader, writing for the “Answer Sheet” blog in the Washington Post, has reported that reading passages on the state’s new reading tests, which are supposedly aligned with the Common Core, featured brand names, such as Mug Root Beer, Lego, IBM, and FIFA.
Isaiah Schrader from Ossining, N.Y., said since the brand names had nothing to do with the questions, they were distracting and amounted to free advertising for the companies whose product names were read by thousands of students.
Pearson, the company that writes the exams, said the use of brand names was incidental. Reading passages and technical articles were taken from actual texts in publication and not created specifically for the test. Real-world passages, the company said, inevitably contain brand names.
Other states remove brand names from passages before using them on a statewide standardized test, or they find other passages. The body of published literature has many from which to choose, and state departments of education mostly feel they can’t appear to be endorsing any product.
Besides the “appearance of endorsement” problem, the legal use of registered trademarks imposes restrictions on the test publisher, whether that’s the state or its test-writing vendor. In most cases, the mark must be acknowledged in the text, with an ® or ™ symbol, and in a footnote saying who owns the mark.
On this issue, I’m on the eighth grader’s side. First, kids are taking a high-speed test, and they don’t need to take time to read a footnote that tells them PepsiCo owns Mug®.
Second, although PepsiCo didn’t pay New York or Pearson to feature its root beer brand in a reading passage, it won’t be long before money-starved states or profit-seeking test publishers realize they can charge for this product placement.
I once considered the idea of putting ads on classroom exams to help defray the cost of paper as well as other materials teachers had used up. It was quickly suggested—by a clever student—that teachers seek advertising from someone who would be willing to sponsor trig identities or some other helpful information in their ad. Shortly thereafter, I changed my mind as to whether this was a good idea.
But product placement in reading passages neither helps students answer test questions nor engages them in the testing process. In other words, nothing could be more useless.
And third, you may have noticed Voxitatis doesn’t run any ads on its websites. Doing so would violate our policies, which are designed to protect our independence. However, a side effect of this policy is that kids aren’t bombarded with advertising messages. They get enough of that from other sources, and I refuse to add to the noise.
