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Bradford Saron

School Finance in the Digital-Learning Era: A Review - Forbes - 0 views

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    Tweeted out by Digital Learning Now, so beware.
Bradford Saron

Helicopters can improve minority college attendance & other misguided policy ... - 3 views

  • Well, the use of a “voucher” system to alter the educational setting for a group of kids is most certainly not the treatment. Voucher is merely the mechanism used here to achieve the treatment.  It may be a policy mechanism that is useful under limited circumstances to achieve changes in educational setting. But the “voucher” is NOT the treatment.
    • Bradford Saron
       
      This paragraph in particular is a good discussion point. 
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    Great resource for discussion with our group!
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    Very Useful!
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    This uses an interesting analogy
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    This was an interesting statement
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    wow. hat tip brad saron
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    Good point on "voucher"
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    Interesting discussion point.
Bradford Saron

Still searching for that pot of gold « School Finance 101 - 0 views

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    This is really interesting. The article talks about the irresponsible fiscal approach of states toward public schools and the perception of how much revenue we require to operate effectively. 
Bradford Saron

Daniel Pink's Think Tank: Flip-thinking - the new buzz word sweeping the US - Telegraph - 1 views

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    Note that this article is written by Daniel Pink, the author of A Whole New Mind and Drive. 
Bradford Saron

School Funding Myths & Stepping Outside the "New Normal" « School Finance 101 - 0 views

  • Reformy myth #1: That every state has done its part and more, to pour money into high need, especially poor urban districts. It hasn’t worked, mainly because teachers are lazy and overpaid and not judged on effectiveness, measured by value-added scores. So, now is the time to slash the budgets of those high need districts, where all of the state aid is flowing, and fire the worst teachers. And, it will only help, not hurt.
  • Reformy myth #2: The only aid to be cut, the aid that should be cut, and the aid that must be cut in the name of the public good, is aid to high need, large urban districts in particular. The argument appears to be that handing down state aid cuts as a flat percent of state aid is the definition of “shared sacrifice.” And the garbage analysis of district Return on Investment by the Center for American Progress, of course, validates that high need urban districts tend to be least efficient anyway. Therefore, levying the largest cuts on those districts is entirely appropriate.
    • Bradford Saron
       
      "Shared sacrifice" sounds very familiar right now. In reality, in Wisconsin we've the only public field under a revenue limit and under a qualified offer directive, so the problems that Wisconsin is dealing with is not because of education. We've already been the ones "sacrificing," through revenue caps and the QEO. 
  • Reformy myth #3: The general public is fed up and don’t want to waste any more of their hard earned tax dollars on public schools. They are fed up with greedy teachers with gold plated benefits and fed up with high paid administrators. They don’t care about small class sizes and…well… are just fed up with all of this taxing and spending on public schools that stink. As a result, the only answer is to cut that spending and simultaneously make schools better.
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  • Reformy myth #4: None of this school funding stuff matters anyway. It doesn’t matter what the overall level of funding is and it doesn’t matter how that funding is distributed. As evidence of this truthiness, reformers point to 30+ years of huge spending growth coupled with massive class size reduction and they argue… flat NAEP scores, low international performance and flat SAT scores. Therefore, if we simply cut funding back to 1980 levels (adjusted only for the CPI) and fire bad teachers, we can achieve the same level of outcomes for one heck of a lot less money.
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    Does anyone have any myths for Wisconsin?
Bradford Saron

Student Test Score Based Measures of Teacher Effectiveness Won't Improve NJ S... - 1 views

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    Another great article about measuring teacher effectiveness with student test scores. 
Bradford Saron

A trip to the Reformy Education Research Association? « School Finance 101 - 0 views

  • Policy recommendation: Immediately implement a new teacher evaluation system based 50% on student assessment data. Prohibit the use of experience or degree level as a basis for compensation.
  • Policy recommendation:  Set in place a strategy to turn over all host district schools, across all grade levels to the charter operator.
  • Conclusions & Implications: The strongest correlate of true teaching effectiveness was the estimate of teacher contribution to student achievement on the same test a year later. However, this correlation was only modest (.30). All other measures including effectiveness measures based on alternative tests and student, parent and administrator perceptions of teacher effectiveness were less correlated with the original value-added estimate, thus raising questions about the usefulness of any of these other measures. Because the value-added measure turns out to be the best predictor of itself in a subsequent year, this estimate alone trumps all others in terms of usefulness for making decisions regarding teacher retention (especially in times of staffing reduction) and should also be considered a primary factor in compensation decisions. Note that while it may appear that school administrators, students and their parents have highly consistent views regarding which teachers are more and less effective (note the higher correlations across administrator ratings of teachers, and student and parent ratings), we consider these findings unimportant because none of these perception-based ratings were as correlated with the original value-added estimate as the value-added estimate was with itself (which of course, is the TRUE measure of effectiveness).
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    Wow. A thoughtful article with good content and reform recommendations to think about. What do you think? 
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