Pearson Owns the System!

I found out today that my school system has essentially sold itself out to Pearson Education in a multimillion dollar contract, which is peanuts compared to the size of the budget, etc.
While I can't help but be suspicious about this move, after reading the proposal submitted (or, at least, the first 5 pages of it) by Pearson, I am a little calmed by the fact that Pearson describes itself as committed to "open industry standards for interoperability".
Of course, Microsoft says the same quite often, and yet we all know how that turns out in the end. (That is what the cynical side of me is telling me.)
Let's see how this turns out, though I am a bit wary.
Oh Tim, whatever happened to the school system?