NYC teacher “value added” and the veneer of factuality
Teachers College sociologist Aaron Pallas takes a New York judge to task for miscategorizing what is Fact Or Opinion in the ruling to let the internal NYC "teacher ratings" become public. (The issue is on appeal, and the judge's ruling is stayed while the appeal is pending.) Essentially, Pallas's point is that with such uncertainty about the […]
New York Times reporters and editors fail reading comprehension test
First read this headline: Test-Taking Cements Knowledge Better Than Studying, Researchers Say. And the lede: "Taking a test… helps people learn, and it works better than a number of other studying techniques." Now read the following text: Without the [chosen] passage in front of them, they wrote what they remembered in a free-form essay for 10 […]