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I've already beaten the issue of the various flaws, misrepresentations and outright data abuse in the Third Way middle class report into the ground on this blog. And it's really about time for that to end. Time to move on. But here is one simple illustration which draws on the same NAEP data compiled and aggregated in the Middle Class report. For anyone reading this post who has not already read my others on the problems with the definition of "Middle Class," and related data abuse & misuse please start there

I know I said I'd stop addressing the Third Way report on Middle Class Schools, but I do have one more thing to point out. Third Way issued a memo in which it aggressively attacked my assertion that they had used district level data to characterize middle class schools. Again, this assertion was relevant to showing the absurdity of their classification scheme, but there were numerous other problems with the report.

Imagine trying to determine international rankings for tennis players or soccer teams entirely by a) determining how they rank relative to the average team or player in their country, then b) having only the average team or player from each country play each other in a tournament, then c) estimating how the top teams would rank when compared with each other based only on how their country's average teams did when they played each other and how much better we think the individual teams or players are when compared to the average team or player in their country? Probably not that precise or even accurate, ya' think?

Tweeters and education writers the other day were  all abuzz with talk by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan of the need to crack down on those god-awful schools of education that keep churning out teachers who don't get sufficient value-added out of their students.

Misinformed charter punditry doesn't help anyone. It doesn't help the public to make more informed decisions either about choices for their own children or about policy preferences more generally. It also doesn't help charter operators get their jobs done and it doesn't help those working in traditional public schools focus on things that really matter.  This post is in direct response to the irresponsible and unjustified statement below from a recent editorial in the NJ Star Ledger

Authors such as Henry Levin have explained on numerous occasions that for a choice model to yield equitable distribution of opportunity, consumers must have equitable access to information on schools and equitable mobility among options. Clearly, equitable geographic access is out the window in Post-Katrina New Orleans.

This is a compilation of previous posts, in response to the egregious abuse of data presented on Page 3, here: http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/64717249

Browsing All Posts filed under »New Jersey Charter Schools«

Browsing All Posts filed under »Value-Added Teacher Evaluation«

Browsing All Posts filed under »NJ Opportunity Scholarship NJOSA«

This new post from Ed News Colorado is in response to my critique of Student Growth Percentiles here: http://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/2011/09/02/take-your-sgp-and-vamit-damn-it/

I spent some time the other day, while out running, pondering the usefulness of student growth percentile estimates and value added estimates of teacher effectiveness for the average school or district level practitioner. How would they use them? What would they see in them? How might these performance snapshots inform practice?

Some Twitter followers may have noticed the ongoing back and forth regarding the validity of the recent Monmouth University Poll on education reform.I'd certainly rather spend my time on more substantive discussion. As I've noted on many occasions, polls are what they are. They ask what they ask. And the responses to the questions must always be evaluated only with respect to what was asked. Questions about specific policies in particular require that the policies in question be described correctly. This is a point raised the other day by Matt Di   Carlo about the Monmouth Poll here. Yesterday, Patrick Murray, director of the polling institute posted a response to some of the criticisms levied against the recent Monmouth poll. Unfortunately, I found his response to be much less fulfilling and in many ways far more disturbing than the poll itself. Quite honestly, I'd have left this issue alone if not for some particularly troublesome assertions made by the polling institute director Patrick Murray.