Scoop: Do Test Makers Cheat Copyright?
Posted by David L Steinhardt
With this year's 25 Most Censored Stories up (see Larisa's post from yesterday), it's time to revisit one from 2003.
But first, some background:
A funny thing happened to my friend Steven last year. So funny, he's suing.
Steven Michael Harris has been a Broadway actor, the youngest-ever Ringmaster for the Ringling Bros.-Barnum & Bailey Circus, a neuroscience theorist, and a school presenter. He had just done a presentation about writing at a school, a presentation that includes excerpts from his children's book about circus life, This Is My Trunk.
The school's principal soon called not only to thank him for a great presentation, but also to tell him how thrilled the kids were, when they took a standardized test the next day, to see that an excerpt from Steven's book was part of the test.
Steven didn't know his book was excerpted in standardized tests.
The book had been published by Atheneum in 1984. Steven's contract specified that if the book ever went out of print, all rights would revert to him. Additionally, the contract specified that if Atheneum, or a potential successor company, were ever declared bankrupt, that all rights would revert to him.
By 1990, the book had gone out of print. In 1991, Maxwell Communications, which owned Macmillan (of which Atheneum was a division), went bankrupt. One would think his contract would have terminated, and that he alone would have had the power ever since to make decisions about, and profit from, This Is My Trunk.
But in 2007, Simon & Schuster, the new corporate parent of what had been Atheneum, was still selling portions of Steven's book to McGraw-Hill for use in standardized tests.
How could they get away with this? Well, tests are secret. Even the copyright office doesn't receive a copy. They're handled under a special procedure. Everyone who handles the tests are obligated to maintain secrecy as well.
The school principal, when telling Steven about his book's inclusion in the test, let one very big cat out of the bag.
On April 10, 2008 Steven filed suit in federal district court in New York, against both Simon & Schuster and McGraw-Hill, charging copyright infringement.
In 2002, my elementary-school classmate Jeanne Heifetz made news by blowing the lid off of how standardized tests heavily edit some literary excerpts in the name of "sensitivity guidelines" that end up not only violating authors' copyrights, but test students on words writers never wrote. The story made 2003's 25 Most Censored list.
My pal Steven's lawsuit appears to be blowing the lid off an equally nefarious practice. Expect to hear more.
