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Channeling Jerry Bracey on “proficiency”: it’s political, not scientific
One of the late Jerry Bracey’s hobbyhorses was the pretense that the NAEP achievement level labels were scientific, as he argued in 1999: “The standards have generally been the object of scorn and derision from the psychometric community.” He was fond of quoting the 1999 report on NAEP proficiency levels, esp. from p. 162: ” […]
The comparability fly in the Ouchi/principal-autonomy ointment
Yesterday from a “stakeholders” meeting (I think at the USDOE), Charlie Barone tweets, Richard Laine of Wallace Foundation: forthcoming Rand study will show [principal] autonomy in hiring a key factor in student achievement. I’ve been expecting something like this for a while, not because I’m connected to a RAND insider (I’m not) but because this […]
First, find me a box of cereal that squirms and drips snot in winter
Congratulations to former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who knows a critical rule of politics: declare victory whenever you can, no matter whether you were right. I am quite serious about his political acumen: his push of a system that assigned letter grades to schools was ingenious politics. And Bush deserves credit for supporting a research […]
Child murder, Chicago style
Chicago teacher Deborah Lynch pointed out in a Sun-Times opinion piece yesterday that one of the Chicago schools’ “turnaround targets” this fall has been Fenger High School, near the gang fight that led to Derrion Albert’s death and the school where she implies many of the combatants attend. (Hat tip/alternative source.) I am not saying […]
“Lake Wobegon” Klein
From pp. 68-69 of Accountability Frankenstein: The complexity of an accountability system can also help muffle opposition to accountability if it gives a reasonable chance for students or schools to be successful in the system’s labeling… the political potential to muffle opposition within a system may be more important than the technical qualities of a […]