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"Yesterday, Matt Di Carlo over at Shankerblog put out his April fools post. The genius of the post is in its subtlety.  Matt put together a few graphs of longitudinal NAEP data showing that Maryland had made greater than average national gains on NAEP and then asserted that these gains must therefore be a function of some policy conditions that exist in Maryland. In the Post-RTTT era, Maryland has been the scorn of "reformers" because it just won't get on board with large scale vouchers and charter expansion and has resisted follow through on test-score based teacher evaluation. Taking a poke a reformy logic, Matt asserted that perhaps the low charter share and lack of emphasis on test score based teacher evaluation… along with a dose of decent funding might be the cause of Maryland's miracle! Of course, these assertions are no more a stretch than commonly touted miracles in Texas in the 1990s, Florida or Washington DC, most of which are derived from making loose connections between NAEP trend data and selective discussion of preferred policies that may have concurrently existed.  The difference is that Matt was poking fun at the idea of making bold, decisive, causal inferences from such data. Such data raise interesting questions. What I found so fun and at the same time deeply disturbing about Matt's post is that the assertions he made in satire… were nowhere near as absurd as many of the assertions made in studies/reports, etc. I discussed here on my blog over the years. Here are but a few examples of "stuff" presented as serious/legit policy evidence, that make Matt's satirical assertions seem completely reasonable."

Even beyond grades, I want my students to know that what they're learning is valuable and can be fun. From playing games to reviewing parts of speech and subject-verb agreement to talking about film adaptations and exploring plot and character development, getting creative with the way we teach will be key to fighting end-of-year distractions. What's more important than the grades on my students' report cards or the score on their standardized tests is helping them see the true value of education. We may only have five weeks left, but a lot can happen in that time. My team and I are going to make sure we make the most of it for all our students.

My four children have all attended public schools in our middle-class suburban district. When my oldest was in fourth grade, in 1998, he took the state tests, and I was not even aware of it. Later, he said the tests were kind of fun; he got to miss his regular classes. Six years later, in 2004, our daughter was in fourth grade. Long before the state tests, a letter came home. Prep classes were being offered before and after school. While the sessions were not mandatory, students were strongly urged to attend. Eventually the results were printed in our local newspaper. The news was grim; the nearby districts, in wealthier towns, had creamed us. The following year, our middle school added a mandatory course to prep for the state English test. That 1998/2004 divide - what happened in the interim was the 2002 No Child Left Behind law - should be kept in mind when analyzing a new, widely publicized study that closely tracked 2.5 million students over 20 years to determine whether teachers who helped raise children's test scores have a lasting effect on their lives. The researchers conclude that having such a teacher improved students' odds of going to a good college, the quality of the neighborhoods where they lived and their lifetime earnings.

Thanks to good ol' Mike Petrilli, much of this week's education policy debate has centered on the relevance of local school boards and the age old tug-of-war between state and local authority over the operation and financing of local public school districts. Much of the debate has been framed in terms of "democracy," and much of it has been rather fun and interesting to watch.  That is, until Mike and the crew at Fordham decided to let Bob Bowdon (of Cartel fame) join in the conversation, and inject his usual bizarre understanding of the world as we know it. This time, jumping in where Petrilli had left off, Bowdon opined about how teachers unions and their advocates repeatedly cry for respecting democracy while consistently thwarting democratic efforts through legal action. The layers of absurdity in Bowdon's  logic are truly astounding, and perhaps best illustrated by walking through one of the examples he chooses.

The University of Wisconsin's Doug Harris has torched a couple of would-be critics for their inane, inept, and unfair review of his book Value-Added Measures in Education (Harvard Education Press 2011). For those who appreciate such things, his response is a classic dismemberment of the Education Review take penned by Arizona State University's Clarin Collins and Audrey Amrein-Beardsley. For everyone else, it's important because it sheds light on why it's so damn hard to sensibly discuss issues like value-added accountability. (Collins and Amrein-Beardsley also penned a re-rebuttal, which is fun primarily because it reads like a note from the kid you caught spray-painting your Prius who tells you, "It wasn't me, it wasn't spray paint, I was actually washing your car, and I was only trying to help hide that dent.")

It was bound to happen. Sooner or later, the worst law since prohibition was destined to swallow my school. It was like watching a slow, stupid goat thoughtfully and systematically eating the neighbor's zinnias. And now it's finally happened; the fun and games are over: my school failed to make Adequate Yearly Progress.

Sherrie Martin, former teacher of the year at a Metro school, is questioning whether she really belongs in the classroom after scoring low on the state's new teacher evaluation. In Sumner County, Summer Naylor left her third-graders behind last month, resigning after eight years teaching. Too many mandates and evaluations made her job no longer fun. New evaluations pushed Robert "Bud" Raikes - the Smyrna High School principal who has a stadium named after him - into retiring early.

That's right. I am not opposed to testing. Tests are frequently the fastest, most direct way of uncovering what your students have learned. There's no point in cobbling together an "authentic" task if what you're shooting for is a quick check on which kiddos can reliably multiply by fives or spell "democracy." Rockets, volcanoes and bubble bombs are fun to create and explode, but somewhere in there, shouldn't students be able to describe the chemical reactions that occur when you combine baking soda and vinegar? Isn't that the point of hands-on learning, illustrating knowledge to drive home key points of content?

"Today marks an important day for early education in North Carolina. Thanks to Governor Perdue's actions, that state's youngest children can continue to benefit from early learning programs that we know improve academic performance."