{"id":2941,"date":"2010-12-26T17:28:13","date_gmt":"2010-12-26T21:28:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shermandorn.com\/wordpress\/?p=2941"},"modified":"2010-12-26T17:28:13","modified_gmt":"2010-12-26T21:28:13","slug":"wherein-i-take-the-axe-to-my-own-ideas-evaluating-predictions-for-2008","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/?p=2941","title":{"rendered":"Wherein I take the axe to my own ideas: evaluating predictions for 2008"},"content":{"rendered":"

For a few years, I've spent the last week of the calendar year doing the journalist\/pundit job of highlighting several stories in the year. I have a few extra hours this week so I'm intending to make some predictions as well about 2011, and I thought, "Gee, what happened to predictions I've made in the past?" Last year, I made some easy predictions about the main education issues<\/a> in the Florida legislative session, most of which were correct, but that was relatively easy pickings. What about broader claims, longer-term claims? So today, a cold-hearted evaluation of the predictions I made almost three years ago<\/a> at the beginning of 2008. How off was I?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. My prediction<\/strong> in January 2008: "I don’t think reauthorization [of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act] stands a snowball’s chance in Key West for this year" (2008). Evaluation<\/strong>: dead on. We're still waiting. <\/li>\n
  2. My prediction<\/strong> in January 2008: "Even though education has largely disappeared during the run-up to the primaries, it will surely reappear in the fall general campaign." Evaluation<\/strong>: whoops. Not only did I miss the whole ball o' wax on education's disappearance, but I speculated about virtually every major Republican contender's take in the general election except John McCain. <\/li>\n
  3. My prediction<\/strong> in January 2008: "My own state is on the cutting (bleeding) edge of a national economic 'softening' at best and possibly the start of a recession. That always foretells budget cuts…. Higher education is usually hit worse than K-12 schooling." Evaluation<\/strong>: I underestimated the depth of the coming recession, but I correctly predicted cuts to higher education in Florida would precede drastic cuts in K-12 budgets. <\/li>\n
  4. My prediction<\/strong> in January 2008: "More discussion of college costs," with my usual grumps about the mainstream media's focus on elite private institutions and the obsession with direct vs. opportunity costs. Evaluation<\/strong>: Yes, we're still discussing college costs, still with headlines about the elites few attend and tuition but not opportunity costs.<\/li>\n
  5. My prediction<\/strong> in January 2008: "[T]he Supreme Court decision [in Morse v. Frederick<\/em>] will not stop debates over how far high schools can go in regulation and punishing behavior that happens off campus." Evaluation<\/strong>: I overestimated how much attention this would get. Yes, issues of student rights are still occasionally in the news, but it's not a major story, even with expanded use of Facebook. <\/li>\n
  6. My prediction<\/strong> in January 2008: "With December’s report that 2006 had the first jump in U.S. teen birth rates since the early 1990s, arguments over the effectiveness of abstinence-only approaches to sex education will continue." Evaluation<\/strong>: there is probably more explicit sex education with information about contraception than in 2007, but the teen birth-rate jump in 2006 was a blip against the larger downward trend (which has continued to the latest reported data). This month, the faux-trends story<\/a> in the Christian Science Monitor was how popular culture was encouraging smarter behavior. <\/li>\n
  7. My prediction<\/strong> in January 2008: growing "questions about the billionaires’ club for reform" but inattention to longer-term strategies of the major education philanthropies. Evaluation<\/strong>: I hit the bullseye. I had no clue that Diane Ravitch would be writing a book within two years that would use a similar term (billionaire boys club), and certainly criticism of philanthropy for a patronizing approach to public education has continued. <\/li>\n
  8. My prediction<\/strong> in January 2008: the "march to state-level longitudinal system development continues, 'formative assessment' is on the lips of everyone…, 'data mining' is both a vague promise of research and a bane to those concerned with privacy, and 'data-based' has not yet appeared on the Lake Superior University list of terms banned<\/a> because of brazen overuse." Evaluation<\/strong>: L. A. Times' database using their value-added measures, anyone? <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I count four hits (1, 4, 7, and 8), two outright misses (2 and 6), and two predictions that were half-right (3 and 5). The hits were in areas where I think predictions were easy to make. A number of other predictions I've made are still waiting for evaluation:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. There will be no massive, national shortage of teachers in the next 10 years (buried in a January 2010 entry<\/a>).<\/li>\n
    2. High skepticism last January about<\/a> highly-optimistic predictions in the Horizon 2010<\/a> report. <\/li>\n
    3. Last week I sided with Rick Hess<\/a> in predicting an "AYP patch" on NCLB, and I said there could also be some potential revision to Title II of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (which covers teacher\/administrator training and professional development). <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      A historian friend of mine confessed recently that he hates political pundits, and to some extent I agree, because they're never held accountable when they completely blow it, or at least very few engage in any reflection about which major statements were ever shown to be correct and which were dead wrong. As a result, political punditry is a culture entirely separate from any checks except those written to their bank accounts. Since my writing at the National Journal weekly forum on education<\/a> could be read as participating in the education version of speculative punditry, I wanted to list this last week's prediction here as a claim that I can be held accountable for. (Disclosure: National Journal<\/em> pays me precisely zip to participate.) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      For a few years, I've spent the last week of the calendar year doing the journalist\/pundit job of highlighting several stories in the year. I have a few extra hours this week so I'm intending to make some predictions as well about 2011, and I thought, "Gee, what happened to predictions I've made in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education-policy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pag0MB-Lr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2941"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2946,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2941\/revisions\/2946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}