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"Moshe Adler, professor of economics at Columbia University, has emerged as one of the most incisive critics of the work of Raj Chetty, John Friedman, and Jonah Rockoff on Value-added measurement (VAM)."

"THE AMERICAN Federation of Teachers (AFT) leadership is straining to balance growing unrest among union members and their strategy of making concessions in the name of "partnership." "

"New York officials recently released the results of the state's 2014 Common Core State Standards-aligned exams. In this post information award-winning Principal Carol Burris of South Side High School  in the Rockville Centre School District, explains what they mean. Burris has been writing about problems with the controversial school reform efforts in her state for some time on this blog. "

"Eva Moskowitz and Bill de Blasio are two liberal crusaders with profoundly divergent ideas about how the mission of aiding the disempowered should be carried out."

"Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute has written a smart article about the selling of Common Core. Its advocates use similar talking points, he says, but the most frequently heard lack evidence. You will hear these five points not only from corporate executives and Chamber of Commerce types, but from all CCSS supporters."

"There was a big to-do recently in New York when new standardized testing results were released and the controversial Success Academies charter chain received very high scores. What, exactly, do the scores really tell us about the schools? Matthew Di Carlo, senior fellow at the non-profit Washington D.C.-based Albert Shanker Institute, explains. This post appeared on the institute's blog."

"But the biggest thing to keep in mind about these results is that most of the important lessons cannot be gleaned from the results alone. Perhaps the most important considerations is how teachers and other stakeholders (e.g., principals) respond to the system. For example, do teachers change their classroom practice based on the scores or feedback from observations? Do the ratings and feedback influence teachers' decisions to stay in the profession (or in their school/district)? How do these outcomes vary between districts using different measures or scoring? These are also questions that really matter, and they are not answerable in the short-term, and they certainly cannot be addressed looking at highly aggregate distributions across rating categories and imposing one's pre-existing beliefs on how they should turn out."

"In this brief, I present preliminary findings that are part of a larger, national analysis of newly released federal data, a primary objective of which is to evaluate the extent to which those data yield findings consistent with findings arrived at using state level data sources. In this brief, I specifically explore variations in student characteristics and resources across schools in Newark, NJ."

"This post is taken from a forthcoming report in which I summarize literature related to state school finance reforms and explore relationships between changing distributions of funding and distributions of tangible classroom level resources. The newly released Jackson, Johnson and Persico NBER paper speaks to similar issues and is included in the discussion that follows"

"Systems like the APPR system in NY mistakenly place an emphasis on human capital rather than social capital and thus are doomed to failure. Rooted in what Michael Fullan categorized as "wrong drivers of change," systems that emphasize individual human capital over social capital and that emphasize the use of accountability data in a punitive way are simply doomed to failure. To replace old systems with similar systems, repeatedly, gets us to the insanity that some other than Einstein, Franklin, or Twain described."

"Overall, then, teacher turnover, in both its attrition and mobility "forms," was quite stable between 2007-08 and 2012-13, although, as usual, there is a great deal of variation underlying the national estimates. And, although it is very difficult to determine the extent to which economic circumstances-the Great Recession in particular-influenced this trend, weakness in the general job market during this period is likely to have played a role."

"Our guest author today is Stephen Lazar, a founding teacher at Harvest Collegiate High School in New York City, where he teaches Social Studies. A National Board certified teacher, he blogs at Outside the Cave. Stephen is also one of the organizers of Insightful Social Studies, a grass roots campaign of teachers to reform the newly proposed New York State Social Studies standards. The following is Steve's testimony this morning in front of the Senate HELP committee's hearing on ESEA reauthorization."

"Bianca Tanis explains in the AFT publication why high-stakes testing is wrong for children with special needs. She describes a system under political pressure to produce data, where data trumps instruction and the needs of children."

"This post is a follow up to my previous post in which I discussed the misguided arguments for maintaining a system of annual standardize testing of all students. In my post, I skipped over one argument that seems to be pretty common among the beltway pundits. I skipped this argument largely because the point is moot if we plan on using testing data appropriately to begin with. My point in the previous post was about tests, testing data and how to use it appropriately. But just as the beltway pundit crowd so dreadfully misunderstands tests and testing data, they also dreadfully misunderstanding demography and geography and the intersection of the two. A related example of the complete lack of demographic "data sense" in the current policy discourse is addressed in my recent post on "suburban poverty.""

"Here is an open letter to Alexander and his committee about the NCLB rewrite that was written by an award-winning principal, Carol Burris of South Side High School in New York."

"So, where should that finger of blame point here?  Or is this just how things work these days - slash the funding of the highest need districts - call them failing - close their schools - give their property and their teacher's jobs to someone else - and claim victory - leaving others, years down the line to clean up your mess? Angry Andy - this is your mess. Now do the right thing and fix it!"

"The problem with this fight is that it drains the system of energy - energy that should be spent on the teaching and learning process. This very visible fight, often fought through the media, is a significant distraction from the work that needs to occur in schools. What's worse, however, is that the battle is over the wrong things. The problem is that the battle lines are all over a misplaced emphasis on human capital over social capital."

"With the debate over testing roiling Congress and state capitals nationwide, it is important to recognize the damage done to American pedagogy by high-stakes testing and the deleterious effects of punitive accountability on the students who depend on public schools."

"Granted, whether and how to alter new evaluations are difficult decisions, and there is no tried and true playbook. That said, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's proposals provide a stunning example of how not to approach these changes. To see why, let's look at some sound general principles for improving teacher evaluation systems based on the first rounds of results, and how they compare with the New York approach.*"