Another dirty little secret of test-based measures
New York State’s department of education recently reported that approximately 20% of students in testing grades refused to participate in this year’s state assessments, the high-water mark thus far of the opt-out movement. Among the various stories and arguments flowing from that is the argument that 20% refusal is easily over the threshold of non-participation […]
It’s all about (re)bundling
The incipient University Learning Store is a demonstration of why unbundling is unlikely to be the future of higher education. If I understand the linked InsideHigherEd article correctly, this is an attempt by seven universities to create an ecosystem of non-credit microcredentials (or badges) that takes advantage of the broader capacity of the collaboration. There are substantial […]
Hillary Clinton higher-ed initiative as Shrek
Hillary Clinton’s campaign is issuing her complicated anti-college-debt plan today, and the analyses are starting to pop up. It may be useful to think of the plan as operating in several layers: Campaign promise as symbolic politics. Campaigns call out to various constituencies in hopes of attracting support on the basis of various symbolic and real […]
A year since Michael Brown’s death
A year ago, Michael Brown’s body was lying in the street in Ferguson, Missouri, and would continue to lie in the street for several more hours after being shot by police. No one should wonder why Ta-Nehisi Coates uses the vulnerable body as the keystone concept in Between the World and Me–yes, it becomes his atheist counterpoint to […]
Validity’s likely irrelevance in personnel processes
My colleague Audrey Amrein-Beardsley is starting a series of blog entries glossing the March special issue of Educational Researcher devoted to value-added or growth measures, specifically the technical qualities vis-a-vis teacher evaluations. In her first entry on the issue today, she argues the following: [Quoting Doug Harris and Carolyn Herrington:] “The issue is not whether value-added measures are valid but […]